


A story

by saderaladon



Category: Marilyn Manson (Band)
Genre: Accidental Burial Boners, Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Concussions, Cutting, Feels, Ginger Fish doesn't like it when people touch his hair, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Self-Harm, Showers, Tim Skold puts things in his urethra, Unabashed Fellatio, Vomiting, emotional distress, fuck the tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2020-12-20 17:06:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saderaladon/pseuds/saderaladon
Summary: Tim is cursed. The curse is not a particularly scary one, but it's persisent and can't be removed.





	1. Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Линии](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/527516) by LunniLost. 

> Hello!
> 
> This is a translation I am making of a story my spiritual brother is writing in Russian, using his own connection to the cosmos and blessing the world with this impossible coupling. 
> 
> This story is not connected to that fucking magical animals novel of mine, it's entirely separate, and all the similarities are to be blamed on the cold airless void we're consulting for inspiration.
> 
> There are more chapters to come and I will be adding them and the tags for them as I go along. Hopefully, additions are going to be steady, but who knows. But I'll try.
> 
> This story is very dear to me, so you're welcome to shit on my grammar, I love that sort of thing.
> 
> Come drown with me and enjoy! :)

Tim is cursed. The curse is not a particularly scary one, but it's persisent and can't be removed.

He walks into the room, sure that it is his. He sees Ginger in there, who in his turn doesn't see him, because he's very busy at the moment. Tim quickly changes his mind about letting him know he's there, once he understands what Ginger is so busy with. And, maybe, it is better to just leave the room quietly, but he can't.

_The smell._

Ginger is sitting near the window with no pants on and methodically decorating his inner thighs, a stationary knife in his hand. Tim can't see much, the light coming through the window is barely enough to see at all, but he wouldn't mistake the smell of blood for anything else. He knows there is a lot of it. And, judging by the way Ginger moves his hand...

Judging by what he knows about Ginger in general - and it's almost nothing, but some things he still knows about - there should be a page of goddamn sheet music in there. Lines drawn in blood. Straight, perfectly even lines. And drops as notes. Tim thinks that he wouldn't mind writing something on that canvas, if Ginger lets him, and briefly loses his mind at that thought, pressing his hand over his mouth not to produce any sounds. As if that helps.

Tim thinks, that if it was up to him, he'd come closer and kneel, he'd lick at the lines as they were appearing on the skin. Tim thinks he should run the fuck out of here and also find a stationary knife. Even though he doesn't like cutting himself - and that's an understatement - but after this he definitely needs blood, anybody's blood, and his own would do too.

While he is thinking all that, Ginger is generating all sorts of sounds, hundreds of them, sounds that could be called moans, and none of them seem pained. He generates other sounds as well, sounds that could be called hissing or panting or sobbing or god knows what else, and all of them also do not seem pained. All of it actually sounds like he is having a time of his life, and Tim feels even worse because of that, and he just cannot leave, he cannot move.

And he feels like he's dying, when Ginger opens his mouth and starts talking, without turning to look at him and without stopping.

"Why are you still standing there? Enough already."

And it somehow doesn't sound like he's telling him to go away. It doesn't sound like that at all, it sounds inviting, but Tim thinks he must be hallucinating, because the smell fucked up his brain that much.

"Sorry," he breathes out awkwardly. "I'll just leave."

"But... Do you want to leave?" Ginger inquires, voice quiet and slightly disappointed.

Tim can't think straight. He takes several hurried steps to the window, and the smell becomes even stronger, that smell that drives him insane.

Tim is fucking cursed.

Tim freezes right there, half a step away from Ginger, not knowing what to do.

Ginger looks at him over his shoulder and drops the knife. He mutters something under his breath, picks it up, then the knife bounces off his palm, and he sends it flying towards Tim. Tim catches it, without realizing what he's doing. His brain, it seems, is just spilling out off his skull through the ears, soaking his shirt.

"Maybe... Maybe you want to help me?" Ginger asks and smiles affectionately.

What is even happening here?

Tim blinks several times and then does what he wanted all along, because there is nothing else in his mind, nothing else can enter it at the moment. He kneels in front of Ginger and takes in the view, looking at the cuts, but it's all just a bloody mess and he can't make out a single thing. He lifts his hand and cuts the skin that seems intact, and also drops the knife, and forgets about it that very instant. He bites into the fresh cut, and the sound that fills his ears, intermixing with his heartbeat, is that of approval.

He doesn't know where the knife is, and the blood coagulates so fast... He drags his mouth across the skin, moving up, disturbing all the other cuts with his lips and his teeth, and they indeed feel like lines under his tongue, long, even, parallel lines, fucking sheet music.

Ginger moans and pulls Tim's closer, holding his slurping head, pressing on his nape with both his hands, as if Tim would even consider stopping what he's doing.

Ginger _helps_ him move, up and then up again, until Tim feels his cock poking his cheek.

_And here's the bass clef_, Tim thinks. The thought is amusing, and he laughs, choking on the blood and on his own saliva.

Ginger lets him go that very second, asking if he's alright. Tim is very much alright, it's just his face is all covered in blood, up to his eyebrows. As a matter of fact, Tim is so alright, that it is even a bit too much, and he giggles, adding that blood is not the only thing he can suck and attempting to free Ginger off his underwear right away, because this thing doesn't need any further discussion, definitely not after blood. Not that he can have any discussions at the moment. He can't have them a second later either, his mouth getting full. There're no objections, though, there're zero objections, just supporting tunes Ginger is producing.

_Smells and sounds._

Everything smells like blood, Tim's whole world smells like blood, but now there is also sweat and salt in the mix. He knows that blood isn't actually salty, anything but. Ginger's blood, for example, is sweet and tastes like maple syrup. But his cock is salty and also delicious, and he's not sure who is enjoying this more, him or Ginger. He thinks it must be him, because usually nobody allows him that much when it comes to drinking blood. He doesn't remember that ever happening, to be honest. Ginger's fingers are in his hair, and he is pulling at it, and it could have been painful, but he is unable to feel anything like that at the moment, the only thing he can feel is burning hot, all encompassing pleasure.

Then Ginger comes, howling like a banshee, and it would've startled Tim, if he had any strength left in his body.

Then Tim notices the knife and decides that he isn't completely lifeless just yet.

He grips it tight. He sticks his tongue out and drags the knife over it several times. He simply _hates_ cutting himself, to tell the truth.

He gets up and bends over Ginger, and kisses him, and his blood runs into his mouth, his blood fills his mouth. And Ginger swallows it frantically, trying to kiss him back at the same time.

And then, then they just catch their breath. And stare at each other in the dusk, their eyes glistening, and there is a fucking abyss in there instead of pupils, a fucking abyss with glowing lights.

_What has even happened here_, both of them think.

_Something... Something fucking amazing_, both of them think.

Ginger wonders if Tim is aroused by all of that - well, he clearly is, but does he need to offer his services in return or doesn't he, and so on. His thought process stumbles, his brain lacking power, but Tim looks at him and gets it. And then he laughs, saying nothing can make it better, because it has never been so good. Well, maybe, he wouldn't mind falling asleep right now, and maybe even next to each other, if Ginger doesn't mind that, and maybe even on the floor, because the ceiling would also suffice for him.

Ginger eyes him suspiciously, thinking that he just might actually be a vampire, since they are told to have the ability to read thoughts, but doesn't say anything. Not a single thing. He just hauls Tim onto the bed, and they pass out.

The next morning is full of interesting discoveries.

First of all, the room _is_ Tim's.

Second, exactly because the room is Tim's, none of it was an accident.

Third - how the fuck did he know about the blood?

Fourth... Well, even if he did, why would he provoke him in such a way, what would he gain by it?

Fifth - Tim realizes he doesn't know a first thing about Ginger.

Because Ginger blinks at him sleepily and acts like his regular self, like a person who isn't capable of anything like that, because he just isn't. But ulitmately it was a provocation, even though Ginger looks as if he doesn't understand why the hell they are sleeping in the same bed, and why the hell they are all covered in blood stains.

Ginger washes his face and puts on his clothes, and mutters something like 'I'm gonna go', but then stops before leaving the room and turns around.

"I'm not... I haven't forgot anything. And I... I did it on purpose," he offers to Tim, and Tim feels sandbagged hearing that.

Tim thinks that he should run after him and strangle the bastard, but then decides against it.

Ginger is _way too_ delicious.

_______________________________________________


	2. Dive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8361359

So, it seems, nobody is avoiding anybody. It seems, that Ginger is acting the way he always does, and everybody else is acting the way they always do, because nothing out of the way has happened to them.

It seems, that nobody even notices that something out of the way has clearly happened here, since it isn't like there aren't enough perfectly normal reasons for Tim Skold to act out just because, he snaps at people in general, and also there is always Manson snapping at people, so Tim doing that fades in comparison to him anyway. But still, one day somebody loses their patience and calls him a fit throwing bitch. And he doesn't even snap after that. Instead he starts thinking what is even happening to him and leaves, instantly forgetting who it was that called him a fit throwing bitch.

He feels very determined to get completely wasted on his own and figure some things out, so he veers off fuck knows where. And there isn't anybody around there, there is nobody there who could bother him by asking what year it is or what planet it is, which works for him just fine. And there isn't anybody there to snap at too, and there is nobody there who could call him a fit throwing bitch, and that works for him even better.

It's dark and warm outside, and something is humming in a low tone, and there are abandonded shops, graffiti and shattered glass. And he's got two bottles of something. He forgets what it was the moment he buys it and then just keeps walking, absentmindedly tearing the labels off. He doesn't understand what the fuck it is when he takes a swig either.

"It's alcohol," he informs the surroundings and then adds: "And it's strong."

Then he sits down on a concrete beam with metal rods poking out of it and does what he came here to do: gets completely wasted.

He doesn't figure anything out exactly because of that. He makes no attempts to figure out his way back either.

***

Tim wakes up at an entirely different place and asks for water. Then he asks how he even got here, and it turns out that he is in Ginger's room and that Ginger's been looking for him all night, first on the streets of an unfamiliar city and then around even less familiar thicket. Tim says there was no thicket there, but then finds a cute little branch in his own hair, a single leaf dangling off it, so apparently there was. Then he wonders out loud why he is in Ginger's room and not in his own, if he was indeed found and dragged back.

Ginger says it is because his room is right next to the elevator and he didn't feel like dragging him further.

"How do you know about the blood?" Tim asks in a raspy voice, doing it only now, even though he should've done it long ago instead of going mental these last few weeks.

Ginger stares at him, no sign of understanding in his eyes, and when he finally gets it, he says that everybody knows about Tim's strange attitude towards blood. Because somebody always gets injured and everybody's seen how he reacts. But most people think that he is simply afraid of blood. And Ginger just likes to watch people, so he knows that in many cases Tim doesn't see the blood and doesn't even know that somebody got injured, but reacts in a weird way anyway.

So Tim asks how he reacts. It's not that he is confused about it, he isn't, he just wants to know how anybody would even notice something.

"Ah. Your eyes go all blurry, as if you drank a full bottle of vodka in one go. And you start sniffing, like a dog, like your nostrils start twitching, really fast. And then you usually find a way to leave right away."

Tim thinks that Ginger should be put into a facility, because what kind of a crazy fucker looks at somebody's nostrils. That is not what he says, though.

"Is it so easy to notice?" he asks instead, voice small.

"No," Ginger says. "I just _wanted_ to notice it."

And Tim doesn't run out of questions after that, it is actually the opposite, now he has at least twice as many as he had before, but he definitely doesn't want to ask them.

Ginger studies his face, his face that looks lost and miserable, which is a rare sight, and adds carefully that he's seen people like him before and not only seen, and that there is even a scientific explanation of some sort to it, and that he'll let him drink his blood, if Tim wants to, and that he's not going to provoke him ever again, if it hurts him so much.

Tim thinks that Ginger provokes him right fucking now.

Then, to avoid that thought, he asks Ginger if he likes pain.

And Ginger understands fuck-all and asks in his turn what pain has to do with anything.

"Well, you cut yourself," Tim explains, shrugging.

"But it's not painful," Ginger expresses his surprise, also shrugging. "It's pleasant."

Amazing.

Tim's face, probably, betrays his thought that it is fucking painful, so Ginger sighs and says that for him it isn't painful at all and that maybe there is something wrong with him and that Tim also cut himself, after all.

"Yeah, after I drank your blood," Tim says, as if it clears up anything. But somehow it does.

"Look, there is no need to worry about it, okay?" Ginger offers softly, regarding Tim like some sort of a grandmotherly lady. "If you want blood, you can drink mine, if you liked it, I mean. You can do it any time you want. I feel nothing but pleasure because of it, and..."

And he doesn't need more than that, but he also liked coming in Tim's mouth, and Tim kisses in a really nice way too, and even though Ginger himself is not that into drinking somebody's blood Tim's tongue performance impressed him very much as well. He tries to explain all of that, because it's nothing complicated, and he isn't fifteen, is he, but all that escapes his lips is just a couple of vague interjections.

Tim carefully observes his misery and waves it away with his hand, saying that he is willing to try everything that's on the menu. Ginger meets his gaze when he says that and indeed feels like a _dinner_ and immediately gets hard because of that, so he says 'alright, okay' and goes into the bathroom to take a shower, because he simply hates discussing these sort of things, especially right before engaging in them, and also Tim must be suffering an insane hangover at the moment.

Tim is left to suffer his insane hangover and to listen to the muffled sound of running water, so he wonders if he missed anything here, because Ginger ran away to bathe too fast and maybe something went wrong. Tim fails to understand what might have gone wrong, though, just falling asleep instead.

And then later they are sitting on a plane next to each other, and Ginger sees that Tim is outright _dying_ in his seat.

"Is it blood?" he asks, whispering in his ear.

"Yeah," Tim whispers back at him pathetically and gestures at some girl sitting not far from them. And Ginger doesn't get it, so Tim tells him that girls are the main evil of this world, because they smell of blood just because. "Look, if it's a wound, you know, then the blood will coagulate soon, and I'll stop feeling it, but girls smell like blood just because and they can smell like blood for a week. And I even fucking know that she is using pads and not tampons, because otherwise the smell wouldn't be so strong. And I know that nobody else feels it apart from me and everybody will think that I am crazy if I open my mouth about it."

"I don't think you're crazy," Ginger hurries out, and Tim thinks that this is what people who go to church to confess their sins must feel like, even though Ginger isn't much of a priest, of course. But that's more than enough for him, so he hides his nose under the collar of his own shirt and tries breathing through his mouth while they're on the plane. Somehow going through this is easier with Ginger sitting beside him. Especially after Ginger tells him he'll help him the moment they have that chance and looks at him as if they murdered somebody together and buried the body in the woods

Then Tim snaps at people and actually feels like killing somebody and burying them in the woods, doing that until they are alone in the room.

They barely have time to talk. Ginger gives him a box of disposable scalpels, and a minute later Tim is sitting on top of him, enthusiastically planting both kisses and cuts on his back. At first the cuts are shallow and chaotic, like metal chips caught in a magnetic field. He doesn't cut deep, careful not to scare Ginger away, thinking Ginger doesn't understand what he signed for here, thinking that it is fucking painful. He still controls himself, he controls himself much more than he actually wants to and immeasurably more than Ginger wants him to.

Ginger is bored, because he doesn't feel almost anything, and he simply must feel something, so he tries to find the words to tell Tim about it. When he understands he can't, he just flinches on purpose, while Tim is marking him with yet another cat scratch. The cut widens, bloody hypodermis getting exposed. Now this _is_ somewhat painful, and Ginger arches and moans, and he is not bored at all anymore.

Tim loses his mind instantly and bites into the cut, teeth pulling at the edges, and Ginger can hear him swallow, because the blood is not just trickling, it's flowing out of the cut, in a steady current of pure pleasure, and Tim thinks again that Ginger is delicious, well, that Ginger is _the most_ delicious. Tim doesn't get to drink blood very often, and nobody's ever been so agitated because of it. He didn't even know such a reaction was possible. And yes, some people have bland blood, some people's blood tastes like chicken broth without salt. So he feels very lucky and thinks _you are not going to get rid of me now. You are never going to get rid of me now._

Ginger thinks that Tim's consciousness or rather subconscious is filling up his body instead of the blood that's leaving it. Hunger, smells, insanity, warmth, all that. He feels like he can smell the blood the same way Tim can. He longs for Tim to do something else to him, anything at all, everything, even though it is absolutely amazing as it is.

"Can I..." Ginger breathes out quietly, not sure Tim would even hear him. Tim does hear him and lifts his head, and asks what is it that Ginger wants from him, stuttering a little.

"Take my clothes off," Ginger says and then adds: "Like, all of it."

And Tim thinks abso-fucking-lutely, and wonders if he can do the same, please, or maybe not, maybe it'll be better if Ginger doesn't let him take his clothes off, because otherwise they both are just going to turn into a pile of charred bones here. He narrates his thoughts to Ginger, and Ginger laughs and allows him to undress. They don't take off their own clothes, though. Instead, for some reason, they strip each other. And Tim is worried, because the blood will coagulate and he'll have to cut Ginger like this again, and it is fucking painful, and he narrates these thoughts as well, the words interrupted by the flow of air he inhales in deep and sharp breaths, by the flow of air he urgently needs more of.

Ginger grows tired of this and explains to him that he can cut him like this a hundred times more, that he'll happily bleed to death here. Ginger tells Tim to shut up about it being painful and calls him a princess. Ginger thinks Tim is going to punch him for that, but Tim just giggles, because he can't get angry and throw his fits right now, not when he is like this, when he is like this he can't do anything, when he is like this anything can be done to him.

Tim ditches the clothes and stares at Ginger, and thinks that Ginger is not only delicious, but also beautiful. Ginger yet again asks if he is allowed to do something, and Tim tells him he can do anything he wants, but they should find the scalpel first.

The scalpel is nowhere to be found, so he pulls out another one and sits down on the bed, and Ginger sits down on the floor between his legs, and that's when Tim understands what Ginger was even asking him about. This way he can't drink blood, so he is not very happy about it, but he figures he can wait for a while, because it is not like this thing is unpleasant, after all, and doesn't notice he is speaking out loud.

Ginger rolls his eyes, grabs the scalpel and drags it across his palm, and Tim's eyes go wide. And he says 'what the fuck, Ginj, we're playing soon', but Ginger just waves him away and then presses his bleeding hand over Tim's mouth, and finally does what he wanted to do, and discovers that Tim is not only beautiful, but also fucking delicious.

If there was anybody to laugh at them at the moment, they no doubt would, the sight being very inspiring of that, the sight of a guy sucking another guy off and pressing a hand over that guy's mouth, arm extended upwards in a straight line. But there wasn't anybody around to laugh or to look at them. Tim also lets go of all his objections. If he still had them, he wouldn't be able to articulate them anyway, Ginger's fingers squeezing his chin tight. But he doesn't have them. Tim doesn't have any objections, he actually thinks that he might have been born to do exactly this, to fuck Ginger's mouth and to drink his blood at the same time, he thinks he can die right now and he won't have any regrets, because he is sure he'll never feel anything better.

"You're delicious," both of them say simultaneously, when they are able to speak again. And that happens after a couple of eternities pass, following Tim's orgasm. Following Ginger's orgasm too, but Tim is unaware of that, Tim is aware only of the fact that Ginger doesn't need hands to suck his cock. But Ginger does need them for drumming, and Tim is still worried about that, because it looked to him like that nutcase cut his palm so deep he could see bones. Ginger informs him that he's played with cuts on his palm before, on both his palms, and everything was alright. Tim sighs and drags him into the bathroom, to clean the cuts and to seal them with medical glue, and Ginger lets him do that, despite not feeling like getting up at all.

He does play after that and everything is indeed alright.

__________________________________________________________


	3. Addiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8362083

Tim almost never tries to run away, when somebody gets injured. He smells the blood, of course, because his curse can't be removed, because it will stay with him forever, but he doesn't get scared anymore, when somebody accidentally makes him hungry. He doesn't get scared, because he is being offered to _feed_, it seems, even more often than he needs it.

But then the fucking tour ends, and Ginger leaves, Ginger has to go somewhere. And they aren't even dating, and Tim thinks, that dating Ginger is absolutely insane anyway, because... Well, because then they would end up flying to fucking Amsterdam or something and getting fucking married in there.

He thinks that on the very first day and then falls face forward into a sequencer. Music has always helped him, and he falls face forward into a sequencer every time something is out of order.

After a few days the situation grows even more strange, because he hasn't left the house and he doesn't answer any calls, and his answering machine does this job for him, because he doesn't feel like talking to anybody. Then he thinks he wouldn't mind talking to Ginger, switching to wondering what the fuck he is even thinking about here right after that, and hugs the sequencer as if it was his best friend, attempting to merge with it so that there won't be any body parts left - or any thoughts of Ginger either, for that matter, thank you very much.

Then he runs out of cigarettes, so he has to leave the house, and the world around him is simply flooded with blood, as if there is a zombie apocalypse going on and everybody is fucking injured in one way or another. He hadn't drunk any blood for years and managed without it just fine, and his mind didn't turn people into walking take-away dinners. And now it's barely been a week, and he's already going crazy. He buys cigarettes and chicken fillet, and eats it raw on his way home, ignoring the passers-by giving him stares. To tell the truth, he doesn't even notice them, instead he keeps thinking that Ginger is delicious, much more delicious than raw flesh, and at that moment he has no opportunity to merge with the sequencer so that there won't be any body parts left.

He doesn't hug the damn sequencer even when he gets home, figuring it's not very productive and doesn't help anything anyway. He feels like a drug-addict and thinks that maybe Ginger is one, and he just got this addiction off him through his blood, because it seems he drank more of it than Ginger's body can contain, and who knows, it could work that way.

One more day later he thinks he could give Ginger a call and feels like an even bigger addict, and hates himself so much it makes him crash a table lamp. He also cuts himself, using the scalpel he cut Ginger with, the scalpel he kept fuck knows why, without even realizing it.

And for some reason it doesn't hurt. He draws red lines on the edge of his hand, identical, even lines, doing it as carefully as he can, and then licks up the blood and understands that he's going to throw up. He doesn't try to fight it.

He vomits out gastric acid and realizes that his last meal was raw chicken that he was eating on his way home, and a couple of eternities have passed since that.

Then he gets a call from Ginger and feels proud that he didn't call him first himself. He doesn't know what to say. So he just asks when he is coming back, and his voice sounds like pure need and obsession, that grip Ginger's throat tight when he hears it.

Ginger swallows a ball of icy needles that have been created by Tim's voice on the other end of the line and answers him with just three words: 'tomorrow' and 'just wait'.

The fucking feelings, though, can't be put into words.

Tim relaxes a bit and hugs the sequencer again to kill the time. He even orders some food on the phone. He even eats it. He hates himself just a little bit less, but not by much, because his mind is not completely lost yet and he understands what's going on.

_Addiction._

But there isn't and there wasn't anything like that in Ginger's blood, apart from the things that also were in Tim's blood and in everybody else's blood too, and none of those things cause an addiction like that. It's Ginger's blood that causes it, and Ginger himself.

Ginger doesn't relax. In some measure, he feels even worse than Tim, because he can't hug the sequencer and relegate answering phone calls to the mechanical voice of the answering machine. There're people around him at all times, and he calls each and every one of them 'Tim' at some point, and apologizes, and explains that Tim is his bandmate. Who he talks a lot to. And it seems that everybody gets him, but he still feels like they are suspecting something. He wants to add that they fuck too. And that he lets Tim drink his blood. And that he wants to be doing exactly that right now, instead of hanging around here with them.

And what is even happening here. He just wanted to help and, well, to be Tim's dinner too, of course. And maybe to come a couple of times. Okay, many times. But not this, he didn't want this.

He thinks about Tim, Amsterdam, relationship and all sorts of impossible nonsense too and wants to cut himself, because before it used to help. This time it doesn't help even when it gets really painful, and then he walks around with a limp and tries to convince people that he just stepped on something and everything is alright. Actually, he has a deep cut on the inner side of his thigh, on the tender and sensitive skin up there, where even Tim never cuts him, where he himself never cuts either.

And he's dying to call Tim, but he thinks that's going to be awkward and that he needs to give the guy some rest, both from the tour and from himself and just in general too. He feels outright terrified when he gives him a call despite all of that, when he hears that voice that can't belong to anybody who's alive, that voice that shows interest in one thing and one thing only.

So while Tim unwinds a little after that parody of the conversation, Ginger doesn't, Ginger does the very opposite. Ginger needs to pack his bags if he actually wants to be at Tim's tomorrow. Instead he cuts both his palms, even though it doesn't help, even though it genuinely hurts. And of course - that's just fucking obvious, isn't it? - of course he doesn't clean the wounds and doesn't close them, he smears some of his things with blood and forgets some other things entirely.

He falls asleep in the plane and he looks as if that plane is flying directly to heaven. And he can't even hate himself for that.

In the airport he decides not to drive by his own place and goes to Tim's, after calling Manson and asking him to give him his address, seriously puzzling him, Manson wondering why he doesn't ask Tim himself, but still helping him with his request.

Ginger is sure he'll just die right there and then, if he hears what he's heard before again, if he hears that thing that can't be put into words, that thing that sounds like pure poison.

Luckily, he doesn't hear anything like that. Tim opens the door silently and hugs him without saying anything too, and pulls him inside, and they don't talk for fuck knows how long after that as well, sitting there on the floor right by the door, clinging to each other, as if they'll fall if they don't. They sit like that until Tim says he wants to smoke, says that in his normal, his usual voice, and Ginger lets out a breath and also asks for a cigarette.

And there isn't any cutting either. They just fall asleep next to each other.

***

"Why are you limping?"

"Stepped on something," Ginger says. Then he sighs and explains that wasn't just something and that he actually didn't step on anything.

Tim thinks he wants to see it, but doesn't say it out loud. Even though he keeps thinking about it for the better part of the day. Then he finally takes Ginger's clothes off him, studies the results of his noxious behaviour and whispers 'jesus, you are so fucking dumb.'

Several cuts are infected, the one that makes Ginger limp is too, and Tim understands something else, something that can't be put into words either, and doesn't even drag Ginger anywhere. Tim just finds a sterile scalpel and informs him that this time it is going to hurt, and adds that he isn't a doctor, muttering, but doesn't offer Ginger to drive him to a clinic, knowing full well he wouldn't agree. So he digs into the infected cuts, cleaning the pus out of them and letting the blood trickle down. He smells it too, of course, but doesn't try to do anything about it. He disinfects every cut with rum, unable to think of something more suitable. He pours medical glue on the cuts too, sealing them, and tells Ginger he'll just make him sit here with his thighs held firmly apart, until everything heals.

His hunger is rumbling somewhere very close to the surface, and Ginger sees that clearly and asks - really asks - Tim to cut him, and that is fucking tempting. Tim refuses and doesn't feel bad about it at all. Tim chews on raw chicken breasts and tells Ginger that he is, of course, much more delicious, but he's a dumb fuck, so Tim is going to chew on raw chicken breasts instead. There is that thing in his eyes that can't be put into words, and that thing Ginger is indeed afraid of.

_______________________________________________________________________________


	4. Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8367813
> 
> Warning: a body part that you might have not expected to get cut gets cut.

"You're a dumb fuck," Tim announces.

Ginger thinks this is the eighth time Tim calls him that this evening. He informs Tim of that.

"You've called me that eight times already," he says.

"Well, because you're a—"

"Nine."

"Nope, I haven't finished."

Ginger thinks that Tim is probably right, but constantly saying that is a little too much. Then he wonders what he could hurt Tim with. Not like really hurt, but just enough to make the dumb fuck meter stop. He doesn't wonder for long and causes a local catastrophe. That threatens to become a global one.

"You have much more self-control than I thought you did. Maybe, you don't actually need my b—" he starts saying.

A second later he understands this is not self-harm anymore, this is a suicide attempt. Because Tim grabs his throat, squeezing it with his fingers, and his eyes become dark, almost black, which is simply impossible. For a moment there Ginger even thinks that maybe Tim _is_ a supernatural creature with fangs.

Tim thinks he needs fucking blood. But now he also needs something else, if Ginger has it, so he spits out through gritted teeth that he wants to swallow Ginger's soul.

Tim lets him go a second before he could lose his consciousness and stares at him, looking like a pissed off fighting bull. Ginger coughs, hoping he isn't coughing his own lungs out. He wants to ask for some water, but...

He's afraid of Tim. He's never been afraid of him, in his eyes the blood sucking creature just needed help and maybe was even sweet, and this is not what he's imagined at all. He thinks he should run the fuck away from here and get rid of this weird obsession he's developed. Instead he hugs him, almost gluing himself to frankly furious Tim, and whispers something that sounds like apologies.

Well.

There is no final scene to the episode. Tim gradually calms down somehow. Ginger somehow stops being scared. Somehow they even kiss, the passage of time divided into bizarre chunks of moments that don't move forward, that move up.

***

Ginger thinks that he still doesn't want to date Tim, and the feeling is mutual, but nobody goes anywhere, so they just skip dating and start living together right away. And that neither of them agreed to either. It is as if a supreme power put them side by side and tied them to each other with an invisible duct tape, and then left, returning back to its transparent celestial temple. That is, though, what Ginger thinks. Tim thinks there was nothing celestial about that being's destination. The place that thing was heading to must smell of sulfur, smoke and burning flesh, Tim thinks.

Tim's angry. Tim declines the offers to drink blood, which is actually something inconceivable to him. But for some reason he knows Ginger won't go anywhere, he'll just keep offering it again and again, until Tim finally forgives him, so... It's very pleasant to refuse. It makes him feel like he's in control of the situation, even though it's an illusion and in reality he doesn't control fucking anything.

The situation turns into a catastrophe once again, when Ginger grows tired of offering things, when Ginger finds that scalpel that Tim used to cut him with and kept without realizing and then cut himself with, though this Ginger knows absolutely nothing about, because unlike him Tim is not a dumb fuck, because Tim disinfected the cuts. Because Tim is not insane enough to cut as deep as Ginger does.

So Ginger finds the scalpel lying around somewhere on the floor and doesn't even bother cleaning it. He doesn't do at least that, despite the fact the scalpel shouldn't be used twice, despite there is being a whole box full of sterile ones. This scalpel is a very thin and sharp metal plate that becomes covered in nicks almost immediately. This scalpel has a white flat plastic tail, and to Ginger it looks really obscene god knows why. So he puts it in his mouth and licks it before doing yet another stupid thing.

He draws his fucking lines, his even, parallel lines with the blade that's covered in nicks. Under his left nipple. And under his right nipple too, to make it symmetrical, and the blood runs down his ribs, marking his skin with red trails, and this time it isn't painful at all again.

Tim comes back from the shower, entering the room wearing only a towel wrapped around his hips, and thinks he'll fucking kill him, and hears his moans even before smelling the blood. It's not dark in the room, Tim actually doesn't remember turning on that many lights, and that is true even if that table lamp that fell victim to his obsession is taken into account. Tim sees everything, every detail.

Ginger is naked apart for the boxers, even though they are nowhere near the place people usually wear them on, and Tim thinks that he's never seen Ginger completely naked before, surprised at his own thoughts and trying not to take too many breaths. Well, he's seen him naked, alright, but that time the room was dark and also it wasn't the most important thing. Now it is an operating fucking theatre here, and he can see every detail, however minute. It's not that he likes watching somebody jerk off, even less so if that somebody has a cock, he doesn't find this interesting at all. He watches nevertheless, because he's definitely never seen anything like _this_ before, because the blood's been trickling down while he was in the shower. Ginger smears his own cock in his own blood and moans, and Tim knows for sure who is it he's imagining there. Then he thinks he's going to kill him. Just not right away, because blood has to be fresh and hot, because it has to flow out of the wound and run down his throat.

The white plastic tail of the scalpel is in Ginger's mouth, and now it looks obscene to Tim too. Ginger holds it between his teeth, flicking his fucking tongue over it now and then, licking both the plastic tail and his own lower lip and, somehow, Tim's insides that turn into a tight ball of flesh because of such treatment. The urge to commit murder leaves Tim's head, now he wants this bastard to live forever, and he also wants to just fuck him properly someday. With no blood involved, so that he won't get distracted. He'd write it down in his datebook, just because it would look great. Though he probably wouldn't be able to do it as planned, because both of them are insane, so somebody would get hurt anyway, somebody would get hurt even if they threw everything sharp out of the house and locked themselves inside and sent the keys flying out of the window as well. Because there're teeth. Nails. Shards of something.

Ginger has noticed him a long time ago, but he can't tell him that, because his tongue is busy licking Tim's insides, even though Ginger himself knows nothing about that. So he says what he wants the only way he can, by slowing down, slowing down that much that his hand moving on his cock looks like a slow-motion picture, and that, of course, doesn't advance anything that is going on, but looks amazing, and it also creates a magnetic force that pulls Tim closer to him, and Tim is hungry and losing his mind. Tim cannot resist the pull anymore, Tim wants everything at the same time, Tim doesn't know where to start, Tim stays silent, because there is absolutely nothing for him to say. Tim puts his own hand on Ginger's cock instead of his, somewhat taken aback by how difficult it is to jerk him off now, because his cock is not just dry, because it is covered in the red sand of the blood that has coagulated.

"How the fuck doesn't it hurt?" he asks in the end, because this does really stun him.

Tim pulls the scalpel tail that looks obscene out of Ginger's mouth, licking it and surprising himself by that action, licking the blade too, but it is so blunt that it can't leave any cuts, if he isn't pressing on it, and Ginger stares at him as if he's seen a ghost, because the white plastic's all covered in his saliva. And, of course, they kissed, but this is not the same, this is something very different. Ginger shivers, and his facial expression changes to pleading.

"Do something with me," Ginger says, trying to sound as persuasive as he can, and thinks that he doesn't sound persuasive at all, that he isn't capable of convincing anybody of anything.

Tim bites his lower lip. It's sharp and painful, and Ginger yelps, startled, and hears Tim's snake-like hissing, Tim telling him he wants to cause pain, to cause so much pain. Tim tells him that he is fucking tired of trying to control himself, of trying to avoid actually hurting him, that he is fucking tired of Ginger's apparent desire to be hurt, that he wants to finally accept this obstinate invitation of his.

"Then stop and fucking accept it already, just do whatever you want with me, I..." Ginger stutters, feeling awkward, but then manages to finish the sentence anyway. "I want to be your dinner."

That fucking phrase about dinner that pops up in his mind more often than he wants to take a leak.

_Whatever I want_, Tim thinks, feeling proud of himself, because anybody else would just snap and lose control, were they in his shoes. And he'll just go a little bit further than before, and there will be so many more shields left, shields that keep him safe and ignorant of what it is he actually wants. He doesn't know what that might be, he has absolutely no idea, but he thinks that it is something like an aerial bomb that he has inside, an echo of a distant war, and he doesn't have any desire to inspect it closer.

Ginger keeps fidgeting, while Tim is considering what is it that he is allowed right now, and agrees to be subjected to any war, to face any aerial bombs that are buried inside him. Because he is fucking dumb, because he thinks he can get through anything.

Tim finally decides what it is that he is for sure allowed to do and pulls Ginger closer, abstaining from giving him any warnings. Tim pushes the scalpel tail between his lips and waits until he licks it, he puts his legs that are caught in the twisted cloth of his boxers on his own shoulder and sticks now undoubtedly obscene white plastic into his hole. His face looks outright monstrous while he's doing that, and his fingers are sweaty because of extreme arousal, and he wonders what's going to happen if the fucking blade slips out of his grip. Sure, it is blunt, but if it gets inside it is still going to cause so much damage, enough that Ginger would be dying in horrible pain, while Tim is sucking the blood right out of the wound, having gone completely mental. The scene unsettles him so much he pulls the scalpel out to avoid making it real and tells Ginger he needs a new one. A sharp one. And they will go looking for it together, no matter the fact that Ginger keeps shuddering and can't really walk. At least due to the boxers still taking hold of his knees. Tim does Ginger a favor and helps him out of them, but it doesn't make Ginger any more capable of walking.

Luckily, they don't have to walk far.

When the get back in bed, though, Tim starts doubting the sanity of what he's intending to do, but it should just be painful, delicious and pretty safe, if he understands anything here. He still cuts the skin around Ginger's hole first, just to be sure, marks it with shallow, even lines, putting all of his strength into holding Ginger in place, because Ginger won't stop wriggling.

Ginger isn't wriggling on purpose, he is even a little bit afraid, but it's all too good to keep still.

Tim stares at the cuts and blinks several times, and then cuts the area he planned to cut from the very start, not pressing into it, barely touching, and tells Ginger to lie as still as he can, because if the blade slips just one millimeter it'll end up inside. Ginger, to his surprise, complies, even though his inner demons drown him in pictures depicting how it is going to look if the damn blade does end up inside his hole. It doesn't seem fatal to him, and this isn't just because he's dumb, even though that is also true.

Tim makes another cut and then another one and stops thinking of anything. Ginger, on his part, is absolutely sure he knows what he's doing, and this is exactly why he doesn't think that anything that might have happened could have killed him. Tim simply can't kill him, even if he wanted to, and this is a sole commandment in Ginger's personal sacred book.

"Does this at least hurt?" Tim asks, finally remembering that there're some other parts of Ginger present in the room apart from his hole, and it is an awesome fucking addition, of course, but he is way too quiet and calm and it's a little disappointing because of that.

"You told me to lie still yourself," Ginger tries to admonish him, but fails in that, and Tim hears everything he wanted to hear in his answer, the pain and the need and his desire to finally stop restraining himself. The latter is particularly obvious.

"Right," Tim says and buries his tongue, his lips and his teeth in Ginger's bleeding hole.

Ginger starts wriggling again, because it's painful, it's pleasant, it's simply fucking inconceivable, and his sensations can't be put into words, and he doesn't even feel like dinner anymore. He feels like he doesn't have any other body parts, he feels like a fucking hole and that's it. He doesn't notice his own erection. His mind is filled with crimson velvety bliss and convulsions and Tim's tongue that is licking his insides, and this time it isn't a metaphor. His body, though, has a mind of its own, so Ginger lifts his hips, drawing an inhuman sound out of Tim, and squeezes his cock. He comes, moving his hand just a few times, and turns into a gelatinous mess that doesn't have and can't have any thoughts.

Things that happen to Tim can be put neither into words, nor into sensations. He lifts his head, abandoning Ginger's pulsing, fluttering hole, and sniffs the air, smelling blood and sex, and jerks himself off to completion with his left hand, his right one still gripping Ginger's butt tight, because he wants to see his hole covered in blood and saliva, because he wants that sight to be imprinted on the retina of his wide-open eyes.

Some time later Ginger hauls passed out Tim onto the bed and even covers him with a blanket, and then goes into the bathroom and cleans the cuts himself, doing it as thoroughly as he can. He doesn't touch the most injured part of his body, though, because neither rum, nor glue would help there, no doubt about that.

______________________________________________________________________


	5. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8380429
> 
> There is some mild violence in this chapter (nothing explicit though), choking, and also self-harm is being discussed, so, like, light reader discretion is advised.

He must be ten.

He's swinging his feet, the fresh waters of the pond cooling his skin, and his motions create a sparkling halo of splashes. His name is Kenny and he has absolutely no idea what he is going to become after not so many years, but childhood is already leaving his veins. Along with the blood that suddenly colors the water red.

He doesn't notice it right away, but when he does, he doesn't think about it much. Water takes away the pain.

He is left with a scar marking his left ankle that stays with him forever. And that would've been just a minor accident, but this exact incident most likely was the first one in the sequence of events that led him to the present moment, that led him to sitting here and telling this story to Tim fucking Skold. To Tim fucking Skold who wants confessions.

_Like there isn't anything else to do_, Ginger thinks.

"So you hurt your leg and then what? What happened next?"

Tim is sitting cross-legged on a ridiculous footstool, and it's a wonder he even can do that without falling. Tim is chewing on some _roast_ chicken, which is highly atypical for him, and he hasn't thrown any fits for twenty six hours already. And Ginger knows that, because he counted.

"Then I came back home and looked at the wound, and it was, you know... So smooth and clean, as if it was made with a scalpel, and it looked like a tiny open mouth. And I touched it with my nail, because I wanted to see the blood again."

"Di'you?" Tim asks, slurring his words, his mouth so full of chicken that his cheeks look ready to burst out.

"Yeah."

"Ginj, come on," Tim says, having swallowed the chicken, eager to go on with the interrogation. "Do I have to pull everything out of you? What happened next? What did you do?"

"I... I just stared at it and couldn't look away, and then I realized that I'd pulled down my pants and... Fuck, no, I just can't, okay?"

"Hm. Well, I kinda understood what you were getting at, but now I want to know something else."

"What now?" Ginger sighs heavily, hoping that this "something else" isn't going to be as awkward.

"Why haven't I seen you blush till now? What's here to be shy about?"

Ginger groans, his head lolling back.

"How would I know? Why are you even asking this? What is so interesting about me cutting myself?"

"Don't know," Tim shrugs. "Just curious. You're kinda mysterious, to be honest. Nobody knows anything about you, apart from the fact that you play drums and piano. Shit, I don't even know where you're from!"

"Framingham, Massachusetts. Did it help anything?"

"It helped me to learn where you're from. But we're getting off track. So... You hurt your leg, realized it makes you hard, jerked off and then what?"

"Then nothing," Ginger crosses his arms and turns his back to Tim.

"Did you start cutting yourself right away after that? Or later? Or did something else happen?"

"Not right away," Tim wouldn't fucking leave him alone, but this way, when he can't see him, he maybe might get through it. "Maybe a few years later. 'Cause it felt more... More intense like this. And it made things easier for me."

"Was jerking off _difficult_ for you?" Tim is trying to suppress the chuckle, but Ginger still hears his muffled snickering and some other sounds he doesn't know how to call.

"Fucking hell, no... Do you never stop? It made things easier when they really sucked... Haven't you ever felt shitty in your fucking life?"

Tim thinks he is this close to hearing what he actually wanted to hear. Tim thinks that if he asks anything else Ginger'll just stick a knife in his eye and claim it has always been there. So he sighs and says that he feels shitty all the time, one way or another, trying to keep his tone as open and serious as he can. Ginger's shoulders relax a little, and he even considers turning back again, but doesn't and just stands the way he was before, and looks at that knife Tim is wary of for a very good reason.

"You also cut yourself," Ginger remarks. "Why?"

"To feel less shitty, yeah, but... To at least fill up on my own blood when I want somebody else's way too much."

"To feel the pain on the outside and not on the inside," Ginger pays Tim back with his own confession and then adds: "When it's really bad, I cut deeper. So that it hurts."

After that he turns around and tells Tim something else, and Tim immediately regrets starting this interrogation.

"Didn't help with you. Made it even worse. I felt like I would've died if I hadn't come here."

Tim is afraid of his candor and it also makes him melt, and he simply _has to_ say that he would've died too, but he doesn't say a single word. And feels very proud of himself for that, of course. As if him not saying it means it hasn't become a fact of life yet. For Ginger, though, it became a fact of life the second he heard that dead voice Tim spoke in when he called him.

***

"Can you shut up? My head is killing me."

Tim thinks Ginger made a huge mistake by getting close to him, but, strangely, does shut up.

Ginger lets out a pained groan and covers his head with a pillow, hoping to pass the fuck out. Tim clunked a guitar over his head and now he is even sorry about it, because he doesn't remember why he did it. That is exactly why since then he's been scurrying around and throwing his fits, while Ginger's been hugging the pillow and pretending he isn't nauseated.

Ginger also doesn't really remember what it was that made Tim crash the poor instrument over his head. The instrument, though, is feeling alright, because nothing happened to it. Nothing particularly dangerous happened to Ginger's head either, it's just a mild concussion and tomorrow he's going to feel alright too. Nothing happened in general, apart from Tim developing a sudden desire to fucking _talk_. It's not that he didn't enjoy their discussion, as a matter of fact he liked it so much it made him full of heavenly affection. But he can't really deal well with heavenly affection and never could, that's just how he's always been, so for the next few hours after the talk he'd been actively trying to find a reason to snap at Ginger. And it seems he did. And maybe it even was a good one.

But neither one of them can tell what it actually was. Tim simply forgot and Ginger never knew and understood fuck-all anyway. Well, what he did understand is that next time Tim wants to have a conversation, he should tell him anything, anything at all, but not the truth.

Ha.

As if that is going to help.

***

Tim is not being provoked for... well, for some time period, he isn't much into counting, but it seems long and now it starts to bug him. Asking for it himself isn't as interesting now. Not that he remembers ever doing that, it is Ginger who's been showing initiative here, even though everything about him says he would never do that. Still waters runs deep or something like that. Tim thinks he doesn't understand anything, he's just dragged along with the flow. He starts to think the waters are really still and the current is man-made, and he wasn't that man who created it.

"Hm, Ginj, did you even like it?"

"Ah?" Ginger's ever-vacant facial expression becomes so textbook empty and faraway it could be a part of the Bureau of Weights and Measures' exhibition. And it's suspicious.

Tim doesn't say anything, just looks at him expectantly, and this could go on forever.

"Alright," Ginger says, growing tired of the staring contest. "_Not bad._"

A second later he's visually missing from the visible universe again.

When in reality he's desperately trying not to miss any sound.

Tim sighs slowly, thinking he hasn't felt such confusion since he was in secondary school, and takes another deep breath, forgetting, it seems, to exhale, and switches to thinking that Ginger is quite a rare type of a bastard.

"You liked it," he says with emphasis and then waits for something, without knowing for what. "I saw it."

"What for are you fucking asking then?"

Ginger doesn't want to be asked at all. The game is on, and if he understands anything about such games, then... Tim is very easy to provoke. And the most thrilling part of it is that Ginger has no idea what it is he's provoking him into. Or _by_ what exactly. But he's dying to have his revenge. For that session of confessing, for the concussion, and for that thing Tim is asking him about, because it is still painful to sit.

So he just stands there like some sort of a pale marble statue, draped in Tim's old beige T-shirt hanging loose from his shoulders, way too big for him, and in extremely obscene white boxers that also were given to him by Tim. Oh, that blessed, thoroughly fucked up collection of underwear of his. All unpacked, labels still glued on. Some women's panties too, and Tim was expecting to hear something about that, something he wasn't looking forward to hearing, but in the end got no comments. As if there is nothing unusual about this, as if it is quite normal to have a box with at least twenty lacy strings put there in storage. Unpacked and with labels on. Ginger is willing to bet that if Tim actually decides fuck knows why to put them on, it's going to be even more pornographic than a bare cock. A bare cock as it is isn't pornographic at all, not really. A bare cock that is poking out of some tiny, ridiculous pieces of lace absolutely is.

If Tim tried to understand what it is that Ginger is thinking about, he would undoubtedly fail.

Because Ginger's thinking about miscroscopical pieces of lace, and his eyes are a deep soporific abyss. That opiate abyss that is always there in his eyes, as if he's a chinchilla or a rabbit. Especially when he's thinking about something like this, but that Tim can't know anything of.

Unless he figured out he shouldn't be staring in his eyes, unless he lowered his gaze.

In the end he does. When Ginger gets completely lost in his thoughts about packages, labels, lace and blood stains on white cloth. Tim lowers his gaze, because the opiate abyss in his eyes drags him down - _way, way down_ \- and overwhelms him, and he wants to come up to the surface, until it's too late. Ginger doesn't have tits, which is a small wonder, so Tim looks even lower, exploring his frame with his eyes and thinking, it seems, for the very first time that his frame is quite alright, and that he shouldn't have given him _any_ clothes.

He'd be perfectly fine with an absolutely naked Ginger too. More than that.

If something is happening at moments like this, it's happening inside their heads, and it doesn't take much time, most likely. But since not even Ginger is counting it, maybe it takes a couple of eternities. Or, maybe, just a fleeting minute. These are equal probabilities.

Anyway, when Tim discovers Ginger's boner, their thought processes begin to synchronize much faster.

The distance separating them, short as it is, is shrunk to zero by Tim's sharp, abrupt, bouncy step closer.

Tim's fingers squeeze Ginger's throat, and the opiate abyss is leaking out of his eyes over the lashes. Ginger thinks he likes not being able to breathe. Ginger thinks he somehow managed to provoke Tim just by standing there and contemplating underwear.

"Press... harder," Ginger whispers, voice constricted, and fucking smiles.

So Tim presses harder. Because he is still angry. Then Ginger repeats his request, asking him to do it harder again, and leans into him with his whole body, and now Tim is angry for a different reason, angry at his own intentions, and this time he's also afraid, because he doesn't want to kill anybody. Breathless Ginger squeezes out his request one more time fuck knows how, and the opiate abyss of his eyes fills with a blissfull haze that is so close to actual insanity, and Tim is so fucking sorry he can't just bite through his throat. Tim holds him like that for several more seconds and then lets go, and catches Ginger by the shoulders, because otherwise he'd collapse - or because Tim _wants_ to catch him. Ginger is soft, as if all of his bones have dissolved, but very much alive. He also isn't soft in _all the places_. His throat is decorated with the bright impressions of Tim's fingers, and that makes Tim scared and hungry, that blows Tim's mind, and his breath catches. As if there is something tightening around his neck too, rapid and intense.

_And there is._

"What were you thinking about, Ginj?"

"Strings," Ginger grits out, voice raspy, clinging to Tim with no control of his own body, trying to rub against his thigh with his cock nevertheless. A sparkle flies through his empty, spinning head, something about confessions and telling Tim the truth, and then it is vanquished, because he doesn't care, he needs to be touched. And Tim hears it through their fucked up telepathic radio (he'll think about that - what the hell - later) and sinks onto the floor, dragging Ginger down too, and it feels like diving into dark, thick water that looks like blood.

Tim _actually_ touches him. Normal people would've started with this, but there isn't anybody there to consider what normal people would've done, who thinks about them anyway, apart from normal people themselves? And they probably don't either.

Tim touches Ginger, he hugs him, grabs his by his wrists, releases, hugs again, hoping to leave marks, more marks, as many as possible. Tim bites into his shoulder with his absolutely blunt, human teeth, and the smell of blood reaches his nose through the thin skin. He thinks that if he bites into him even harder, the blood will gush down his throat. He thinks he might do without the blood, he didn't forcibly cut everybody he fucked, did he. Ginger's just a very special case. Tim knows he _can_ and doesn't need much more than that. Usually. But something's been going on between the two of them this whole day, something strange, something that can't be put into words. Tim would call it an electrified blade, if he was in the mood for poetry. Inexplicable things that happen and can't be described. Because fucking descriptions aren't needed. Because what they need is touching. Tim squeezes Ginger's butt under the white cloth of the boxers and thinks he should've given him his own, his own _dirty_ boxers, should've done that instead of using words nothing can ever be described with.

Ginger lets out a long and expressive string of swearing, addressing nobody in particular, and then says this actually hurt, and Tim bursts with hysterical laughter. Ginger and complaints about pain are a hilarious combination, but he isn't complaining. Just informing him, just stating the facts, and were Tim to develop a desire to fuck him right now, Ginger would let him. Mucosa heals pretty fast, but not fast enough for it not to hurt, under Tim's touch too, and Tim touches him a lot and in many different ways, both gently and intentionally cruel. But Ginger would let him, and Tim knows this through their radio, and this is enough for him.

Dumb tangible things pertaining to reality Tim doesn't want to come back to inevitably build a hive in his mind, buzzing in his head, even though he is still deep in that thick bloody water and probably won't be ever emerging out of it completely. He asks Ginger how much of his bisexuality he has _cashed in_, using these exact words, so Ginger opens his eyes and blinks, confused, but then their radio explains this nonsensical lexical construction to him.

"Like, 7 out of 10," he says. "I think I've tried everything, apart from like really crazy stuff."

Tim wonders what that _crazy stuff_ might be. Just for a tiniest fraction of a second. Then tangible things pertaining to reality take a hold of him.

"Ginj, fuck me."

_They'll have to get up for that._

Tim doesn't want to get up or to stop touching Ginger. Dumb _bees_ pertaining to reality persist, telling him to get up, at least because he himself would choose 4 out of 10, whatever that might mean.

At any rate, he doesn't think Ginger'll refuse, because why would he.

So they raise from the kitchen floor without letting go of each other. Tim still holds Ginger, trying to keep the physical contact between them as expansive as possible, and it makes walking infinitely hard, but fuck it, he just needs lube, and then they will come back. Tim is very determined to come back, seeing this is how things are going. And dumb bees pertaining to reality can fuck off. Well, apart from the lube. And this is true only now, because he knows that one day he'll ignore the buzzing hive full of the highly rational honey altogether.

Ginger is balancing on the edge between two worlds. Two foreign worlds, he's not sure either of them is where he came from. Tim's fingermarks burn on his skin, and it is so hard for him to breathe, so it feels like Tim is still controlling his intake of oxygen. Tim ransacks the shelves and boxes, drops something, locates the thing he's been looking for and drags Ginger back.

"Let's dive?" the whisper sounds insane, and his blue eyes become supernaturally black again.

Ginger laughs, breathless, and says something about the need to remove their clothes before the dive.

Dumb things pertaining to reality stop buzzing and commit self-immolation. The wood of the kitchen floor is the best spot to have sex, mister Skold, you're right. And mister Fish supports you fully, so we're just going to sacrifice ourselves here.

_To appease your unbelievable fucking stupidity._

Oh, yes.

Tim won't be bored.

Ginger grabs a kitchen knife off the table and permanently removes their clothes. These clothes, at least. It it quite likely Ginger'll accidentally cut both of them, and Tim almost starts praying for it not to happen, because isn't this crazy enough without the fucking blood present. There is never enough blood for him, though, and now too, but were it to appear, he'd just die right here, overwhelmed by the sensations. Except, Tim likes overwhelming things. But Ginger is careful to the point where it becomes a symptom, and this Tim knows about him for sure. So they dive down, and Ginger asks something about the condoms, and Tim laughs like a maniac, because they fucking drank each other's blood. Because it's worse than being married for forty years. Because it's better than that, it's better than any other way of being close there is.

Then it is Ginger's turn to laugh, because he noticed the label on the bottle, the label depicting Mickey Mouse with a giant dick. Tim tells him it is just a label and that if Ginger likes it so much, he can put one exactly like it on his fucking forehead. Then he throws his head back and spreads his legs, just like that, no change of pace, he does that and bends his knees, overstraining his joints. He hates fucking on his back, it's simply uncomfortable. Especially when there is a wooden floor underneath. It's just nobody questions his position, and now it is enough of a reason to be lying like that.

Ginger manages to empty a full half of the bottle onto his palm. His movements are nervous, uncontrollable, jittery, too much so. Tim studies the underside of the table and thinks he's never wanted to be fucked this much in his entire life.

Ginger tries to be careful, but fails, and his hands are shaking, and not even because he's afraid, definitely not because of that. He tries to be careful, but it is actually way too fast. It takes him less than a minute to shove four fingers in Tim's hole, and who knows why he even needs to put that many inside of him anyway.

"Fucking forget about it already, I'm not made of glass," Tim proclaims, and this works as a trigger.

Ginger is tired of trying to be careful and became tired of that a couple of eternities ago, he is listening only to that radio that is playing in their heads, to the radio that is full of only one thing, that is full of Tim's hunger. It's the only thing that matters too, Tim's fucking hunger. Ginger loves to exist only to satisfy it.

He hammers into Tim's unfolded body, realizing that the hunger keeps growing with his every thrust for both of them, and there is no limit to it.

_Who needs fucking limits anyway?_

Tim's also not motionless, jerking his hips up and making not exactly gentle thrusts even harder. Harder, faster, breaking the boundaries, as if there were any before. Ginger's forehead meets the underside of the table a couple of times, but Ginger doesn't notice that. Ginger comes, having just crashed into the wood again, and dies on top of Tim, going through phoenix's stages of development in the brief seconds of his post-orgasmic seizure.

Tim doesn't remember when he came. Before Ginger, after him, at the same time, though, this last option is just ridiculous, and he doesn't give a fuck anyway. He holds Ginger's head in his hands, fingers in his disheveled hair, and licks his forehead with broad sweeps of his tongue.

There is blood. Of course, there is blood.

Ginger throws up right next to him, just vomits on the floor, and that only because he managed to turn his head away from Tim. He's still suffering his mild concussion, and it has only been made worse by the table. Also, his knees are chafed. So are Tim's shoulderblades and the small of his back. But Tim doesn't give a fuck about that either, and he could use being more caring and attentive and now he is quite alright with being that.

And there is something else.

Tim licks into Ginger's mouth too, tasting the sour of his - of _Ginger's_ \- gastric acid, and Ginger doesn't even try to get away, he is just astounded.

It's trust.

________________________________________________________________


	6. Grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8391624
> 
> Both the burial and the burial boners are accidental, but I mostly meant the latter. Anyway, yeah. Burial. Boners. Enjoy.

This is how it goes.

Tim is hugging the sequencer. Ginger is lying on the couch in front of the TV, and he is cold, and he is trying to cover himself with something dark red, fluffy and burnt in at least ten different places, in something that also reeks of beer. Probably, long, long ago it was a blanket. Tim no doubt could buy a hundred more blankets just like this and he even might have done it at some point, but he doesn't really remember and keeps using this one out of some sort of domestic sentiment. And because of being lazy too, most likely, he is indeed very lazy about everything that isn't music, sex or self-destruction.

Then finally his excessive inspiration lets go of him and he wonders out loud what that shit Ginger's watching is called.

It is called What is the Meaning Of Life?

"I can't hear anything because of you," Ginger says with indignation, trying to shout down Tim's absolutely mental laughter, and then also laughs for no reason.

"So what _is_ the meaning of life?" Tim asks, finally stopping to chortle. "You've been absorbing that bullshit for half an hour already."

"I've got no idea, to be honest. Something about religion and ecology, the history of the planet and the ice age. And global warming. This last one I kinda even like. It's freezing in here. Like in a grave."

"Don't you know how to use an air-conditioner? And where do you get your knowledge about the weather in graves?"

Tim's questions must not be answered with truth, if he is demanding more of the confessions, but he didn't in fact demand anything, so Ginger forgets this rule of his and lets out a truly mysterious string of words.

"Well, graves aren't actually cold, it's more like... cozy, so this is just an expression."

Tim thinks that this string of words is also just an expression, just a weird turn of speech, mister Fish's own specialty, best regards from the man himself. But Ginger's face is relaxed and calm, and something bugs him about this, something isn't right, even though trying to read anything on Ginger's face is like reading one book for your whole life. But still.

"Cozy?"

"Yeah, cozy, like you feel you're safe and protected and you want to stay like that forev— Fuck! Fuck."

Ginger realizes he said something really strange and cuts himself short. The words he reads on Tim's face say Tim is fucking shocked and wants to know details. _Needs_ to know details. All of them. And there is no other option apart from telling the truth, because Ginger has never been inventive. He knows how to count and how to keep the tempo. And how to provoke Tim. But not what he does that with. Not until it happens, that is.

Fucking amazing.

"Okay... You know, there're these companies and they can put you in a grave and bury you. And then dig you out, of course. And they give you a gas mask and everything, so you don't suffocate in there."

Tim thinks he hasn't even asked anything yet.

Tim thinks he is pretty alright up in the head, if compared with Ginger.

Tim thinks Manson would love this and that he wouldn't shut up about it, ever, if he knew. Which means that he doesn't know, and if he doesn't, then nobody else does. Well, apart from those guys who buried Ginger and then dug him out. But it's unlikely that he told them his name, so...

"If you tell anybody, I will put you in there too. And I won't dig you out," Ginger adds.

Tim nods, showing he's already figured that out. Then he blurts out that he wants to be buried too.

Ginger shrugs and says he can give him that company's contacts and that there're actually many others just like it online, so Tim just needs to turn on his computer.

Ginger's fucking dumb.

Tim wants to bury Ginger himself. Or Ginger to bury him. With no witnesses, risking suffocation, because neither of them knows how to do it properly or because both of them would love nothing more than to get rid of one another and of this obsession. Maybe, Tim doesn't know where to stop.

Tim doesn't know where to stop at all. And Ginger also can't stop him.

"It's dangerous," Ginger says, sounding concerned, shifting there behind Tim's back while Tim is browsing the internet in search for the information.

"Exactly," Tim says, turning to face him for a second and waving him away, and then he says it again, with emphasis. "_Exactly!_"

"Are you crazy, are you really going to..." Ginger speaks again, sounding like he's pleading, when Tim starts clicking on the buttons, ordering the instruments he needs.

"_We_ are going to. But I haven't decided who is going to become a necrophile's bride yet, I mean, both works for me, so..."

Ginger tries to make it look like nothing here works for him, like Tim is absolutely insane, but because Tim is absolutely insane mentally stable people shouldn't argue with him, so alright, he'll fraternize with the mother nature again, because he at least has some experience.

_Experience of being at Tim's mercy, right._

Ginger can't stop him, because he wants it least of all, because he doesn't want Tim to stop, not ever.

***

"Didn't know you were so good at digging," Ginger says, standing there wrapped in fleece.

He, of course, told Tim graves aren't actually cold, but then they talked some more and it turned out they were, so Tim - goddman fucking Tim - wrapped him in fleece, dressed him the way even his own mother never did and practically put him into a cocoon, and this is very, very weird. Ginger thinks that this is an entirely new level of insanity. Wanting to bury somebody alive and at the same time worrying that this somebody will catch a cold.

They are God knows where. Some kilometer of some highway, and if they get caught here, because there are still patrols, of course, if they get caught here they'll have to do so, so much talking to explain what the fuck they are doing there, but then again Manson will simply love it and in the end everything will be alright. If Tim doesn't accidentally kill him here, that is. Ginger, though, is not really sure what he actually would prefer, to be accidentally killed by Tim or to live with what would no doubt follow, if they get caught here and Manson or anybody else loves it.

Tim puts plastic film into the grave that is at least three times more shallow than a normal one. Then he turns to Ginger and gives him his hand. Showing his palm. This little detail does something to Ginger. A wave of deep affection rolls over him and at the same time he feels fear that is also deep, that lands on him heavy and clings to him like tar.

"This turns you on," Tim whispers, pulling him closer and hugging in a very obscene manner.

Ginger shivers, swallows hard and nods, even though Tim can't see him doing it like this, even though Tim doesn't need any confirmation. All the more so because he feels a rather solid confirmation poking his thigh.

"Did you also have a boner when those guys buried you?"

Fuck.

"I hate you," Ginger says, pushing Tim away.

Then he puts on the gas mask and lies down in the hollow. Tim thinks Ginger did this at least a hundred times, his movements so ordinary and automatic, and he wonders what is it he doesn't yet know about him. What is it he doesn't know about himself.

Tim wraps Ginger in film, creating a thick protective pod around him. Tim's afraid of himself, he makes his own skin crawl, he licks his lips constantly and bites them too, and his saliva falls on the film a couple of times, producing a surprisingly loud sound.

He finishes the wrapping process and trails his hand over the rustling mummy, and Ginger shivers inside his pod, and Tim wants to lie down too, right next to him, he wants somebody to bury them together like that, and fuck digging them out too, just leave them there, thank you very much.

Then he picks up the shovel. Blood mixed with arousal is pumping in his ears, and Tim doubts that he'd be able to get through those thirty minutes they agreed on. Two hours have already passed since they left the house, and he spent all this time thinking about what he is doing. What _they_ are doing. There is probably no name for this, it's only his fucked up, intoxicated mind that comes up with something like this, with getting hard because of this. It's only their fucked up, intoxicated minds.

Ginger feels the first portion of soil landing on his body and then the second and the third, and then he stops counting. The weight pins him down, hugs him, cold and heavy, and he thinks that Tim's embrace feels exactly the same, that Tim is a walking grave, and did they even need to do this if it is so...

Of course, they did.

Tim sits there smoking and stares at the hose of the gas mask that sprouts out of the ground and touches it from time to time to check if Ginger's still breathing. The timer is counting the passing minutes, and Tim thought he would be watching it without looking away, but it turns out to be as far from the truth as possible.

It turns out that instead of looking at the timer he is jerking off thinking of Ginger buried there in the ground, touching Ginger's breath with his fingertips, and this is as far from anything he's ever jerked off about as possible, it is impossibly far from that.

Ginger is suffering at that moment, because he is impossibly far from feeling cozy and at peace and from spiritual awakenings. His feelings are entirely sensual, erotic, with a touch of pure, horrifying awe. He can't move a single digit, but he feels arousal every second he spends lying buried in the ground.

If Death wanted to take either of them that second, he'd back down and retreat. There is simply too much life in both of them, too much scary things, things that cannot be killed.

Tim comes at the same time the timer starts buzzing, lets out a long string of swear words, maybe not even English ones, and realizes that his hands are covered in dirt. And his cock too. And this looks as if he dug out a hole in the garden and fucked it. He wastes some time looking for the wet wipes. Wet wipes Ginger insisted on bringing with them.

_Because we're going to get absolutely soiled anyway._

_Not this soiled_, Tim thinks, trying to comb the dirt crumbs out of his pubic hair.

He digs Ginger out with his bare hands, standing on his knees. His nails ache because of such blatant disrespect and his fingers ache too, everything aches, because he is a fucking musician and not a grave digger. He is a polished creature that requires delicate treatment in general, despite his disregard for proper hygiene or doing the laundry. But he thinks digging Ginger out with his bare hands is a right thing to do, and also that it is faster.

Tim pulls the gas mask off him even before he's completely free of the soil, not to mention the plastic film. His long bleached hair cover the ground as a result, and Ginger isn't happy about it at all. Tim doesn't give a fuck about that, which is not unexpected. Tim wants to kiss. Tim's kissing with a dude who is half buried in the ground, and it is as if he's kissing Death himself.

It's beautiful.

Ginger is able to voice his opinions now, so he demands that Tim stop being stupid and pick up the shovel. Tim does, but then still takes it out on the film, attacking it, tearing it into pieces with his fingers, and Ginger thinks this is unbearable.

Then Tim refuses to clean up the mess they created. He leaves the gardening tools and the gas mask and film that is torn to pieces and the grave he dug, he leaves them just like they are, and those who might stumble upon all of it can think whatever they fucking want. It's only Ginger who's been symbolically reborn and wet wipes that he takes back.

There's enough death for him today. Now he needs life.

Ginger thinks this is a bad idea. Because they are still at some kilometer of some highway and patrols still do exist.

Tim is standing on his knees on the road and he is smirking, and his smirk makes Ginger's teeth ache, and Tim tells him things he already knows himself.

"Come on. You'll get in the car and I'll blow you, come on, Ginj, I know you want it. Or, if you want, you'll get behind the wheel and I'll blow you while you're driving. And we'll die in a car crash and turn into a pile of meat and bones and they'll bury us in the same grave, because they just won't be able to tell what's whose. You choose."

Ginger thinks this is a _very_ bad idea, even though he likes both options.

In the end he settles on the first one and gets in the car, sitting on the back seat and facing Tim who is still standing on his knees. He helps Tim pull all that overly warm fleece or whatever it is he's wearing off himself. Then he falls on his back, unable to sit, because he's been dying to be touched for so long, be it a hand on his cock or a mouth on his cock, could be feet for all he cares. Tim's mouth works perfectly well for him, more than that. Tim's mouth is hot and wet. And its owner is a living being. Ginger's had enough death for today too.

He comes way too fast from Tim's point of view. And way too loud too, though that Tim doesn't mind at all, that Tim quite enjoys.

"We'll get back to this after we're clean," Tim informs him and lights up a smoke, still sitting on the concrete and staring at Ginger's flaccid cock. Ginger doesn't have any strength left to pull up his pants.

Tim finishes smoking and shoves his legs into the car, he closes the door and gets in the driver's seat.

Tim knows something Ginger doesn't. Because Ginger's been way too busy to pay attention.

There aren't only patrols on the highways. An old lady in a small, sky blue car spent two minutes looking at them. Tim waved at her, without putting the blowjob on pause, and she crossed herself and drove away in a hurry.

Tim thinks that this image is going to haunt her till the day she dies, that she's going to see him with a cock in his mouth in her nightmares, and for some reason he quite enjoys thinking that too.

______________________________________________________________________________________________


	7. Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8396941
> 
> Warning: a body part that you might not have expected to get hurt with soap gets hurt with soap.

"You _trust_ me," Tim announces.

Well, no, he kind of asks this, but the intonation pattern is not that of a question and actually he is just stating the facts.

The door is shut, separating them from the outside world again. Ginger, who's spent their whole way back home lying there on the back seat with his pants pulled down, is trying to pull them back up, while they are walking from the car to the house, but not very effectively, because now he isn't even sure he has to. After all, nobody is going to arrest him for gross indecency on Tim's porch.

"Hm, do I?" Ginger says in his turn, sounding drowsy. He doesn't really understand what Tim means by that. He doesn't understand almost anything at the moment.

"Yes," Tim says. "Come on."

Tim is dragging him in a direction that seems wrong to Ginger, so Ginger lags behind and doesn't go anywhere.

"But we should take a shower first..." he says.

"That is exactly what we are going to do. What's wrong?"

"The direction. The bathroom is another way," Ginger offers, looking positively retarded, and Tim rolls his eyes.

"There are two bathrooms. Well, that one is a... Fuck, whatever. Let's go already, okay?"

Tim has no desire to deal with that rectangular water basin right now.

Ginger sighs and follows him, complying. He doesn't really know his way around Tim's house, there were other things to do.

He still wonders how he managed to miss something this huge and says this isn't a shower stall, this is a fucking bed and people can sleep there. At least four people. Tim tells him that this is very much a shower stall and adds that if Ginger wants to he could bring a mattress here, but Ginger would have to look for sleeping companions on his own. Ginger imagines posting such an ad and snorts.

While he is sorting through his crackbrain associations, Tim pushes him inside. Without undressing. When Ginger starts saying something, voicing his indignation, objections and confusion, Tim just repeats his phrase about trust, and Ginger shuts up mid-sentence, stunned.

Tim turns on the water.

Ginger has a whole wardrobe on and he's already cursed it for at least a thousand and two hundred fifty times, and now all of the clothes he's wearing are getting wet and unbelievably heavy, and they are pulling him down. So he slumps, leaning on the wall of the colossal showering structure, and closes his eyes. He thinks that this is seriously stupid, taking a shower dressed. Like walking under the heavy rain. Well, not exactly as unpleasant, because the water here is warm, it is warm here in general, but it is still similar.

Tim is standing at a dry place, where there is no water, but there is shampoo and some other stuff, and Tim might remember the purpose of it if he tries hard enough, but only if he tries really hard. Sometimes he doesn't come in here for months, even if he sits at home all this time, and to tell the truth he is in agreement with Ginger that this is not just a shower stall, this is a shower beast, but right now he's glad that this beast lives here. Because he is going to _wash_ Ginger. And not just wash him, not the way it is done in cheap porn videos, no. He's going to wash him the way he, Tim Skold, wants to. Ginger trusts him, so...

Tim makes up his mind and picks up a bottle of soap and then kneels next to Ginger. Who is washed away by then and floating at a distant place. Maybe, the water that supplies the pipes comes here directly from Lethe. This is what Ginger is thinking about. He is buried under the layers of wet cloth and under this whole day.

"Hey, wake up," Tim says, raising his voice, cutting through the sound of the running water.

He gets scared for a second there, thinking that Ginger might have fucking drowned, because first there is no observable reaction. Tim has enough time to turn off the water and think something about doing mouth-to-mouth before Ginger shifts awkwardly and tries to open his eyes, but mostly fails.

_Perfect._

Tim grabs at the bottle and pours soap on Ginger's head.

Ginger fully regains his sense of reality and realizes that Tim is fucking weird.

That means that when Tim was drinking his blood Ginger felt alright. When Tim left bruises that aren't in any hurry to fade away from his neck he felt fucking amazing. When Tim suddenly decided to bury him Ginger felt a little uneasy, but then it again became fucking amazing and so on.

But this Tim scares him. This Tim who is carefully freeing his hair off pieces of dirt. Which is exactly what he is doing, creating an enormous amount of foam at the same time, and now Ginger simply can't open his eyes and can't see the level of Tim's obsession.

Of course, Tim is obsessed.

Medieval interrogators would either burn him or accept him as their own. They are, probably, the only people who could understand such obsession. Ginger doesn't. Also Ginger doesn't see it, and this way it is not as unbearable.

Or, maybe, the thing is, nobody has ever washed his hair. Blood, bruises, even graves, all of this has happened before, even though not like this, not like this at all. Especially the graves, but everything else too. But it has happened. Not the hair. He grew it when he was already old enough to wash it on his own and that is how he did it after that. He dyed it on his own too. He did everything with it on his own. If Tim'd asked him if he could touch it, he would've said no, but Tim never asked. Ginger remembers Tim touching his head before, but can't recall when it happened.

_All the time?_

Ginger snorts and gives a shudder. Tim tells him he is going to kill him, because it is just pure luck that soap doesn't end up in his eyes.

"You'd sooner kill yourself," Ginger says, barely audible, and everything inside him goes tense in fear.

"Yeah," Tim confirms it calmly. "But I can do something much worse, so shut up and enjoy yourself."

"Do I _have to_ enjoy?" Ginger inquires, paying no attention to Tim's advice about shutting up.

Tim tells him that if Ginger prefers to suffer and writhe in pain then so be it, he doesn't mind, just please stop fucking wriggling and please stop saying stupid fucking things. Even though he doesn't actually mind talking either.

"I _hate_ it when people touch my hair," Ginger informs him.

Two antonymous answers appear in Tim's head, so he can't decide which one to choose and in the end voices both of them.

"I'll be careful, but I don't give a fuck," he says.

Ginger makes a sound that means god knows what and keeps sitting still.

Until Tim finishes sorting through the pieces of dirt.

Because he stops combing Ginger's hair, gets on top of him, preventing any movement, and digs his fingers into Ginger's miserable head.

Also he shuts his eyes tight.

"Thanks for the warning," he says.

Ginger doesn't hear that. He is trying to wriggle out, as if his life depended on it, but fails in that too.

Tim waits until Ginger stops his attempts to shake him off and tells him that he is going to do it no matter what and thinks that this is much more interesting than he expected it to be and asks what is it that Ginger feels because of this.

Ginger feels like he's on the stage and he's naked. And not behind his drum kit, where nobody sees him anyway, but on the very edge, that he is sitting there, swinging his feet. And everybody is staring at him, studying him. This is the only way he can describe what he feels, but if he was offered a choice between this nightmarish phantasy and fingers digging into his skull, he wouldn't choose the latter. He wouldn't choose it for sure.

He _absolutely_ wouldn't.

Ginger explains all of this to Tim and freezes, as if he said something disgusting.

Tim starts thinking things, hearing that, then comes to a conclusion and says quietly that if Ginger wants him to he'll let him go. But first he'll have to tell him if he trusts him or not.

Tim doesn't have to say anything else. What he could say can't be put into words anyway.

Ginger does trust him. And if he concentrates on thinking that these aren't just anybody's fingers, these are fingers of a very specific person, he feels he might even get through it.

_What the hell._

He tells Tim _I can take it_ and Tim responds with a content smirk.

And digs his fingers in even harder.

Both of them have closed their eyes.

Ginger stops suffering after a couple of eternities. He does, though, and he isn't even trying to get through it anymore, and wonders what the fuck Tim's done with him, feeling amazed.

It lasts much longer than washing somebody's hair usually does.

Tim thinks they are predestined to stay in the belly of the shower beast till the very morning, seeing that both of them are so fucked up. He's also very proud that Ginger doesn't know what should be done to Tim himself to make him feel like Ginger feels right now. He understands right away that Ginger was within a hair of learning.

But Ginger is dumb, so he doesn't know.

_Most likely._

Tim lets go of Ginger's head and turns on the water again, arching back in a way that doesn't seem humanly possibly. Ginger doesn't see that, but feels it with his whole body, because Tim doesn't even think of getting off him. Then his fucking fingers dig into Ginger's hair again, rinsing the soap out, and Ginger thinks that if Tim has some plans for using a conditioner he is simply going to die here.

Tim had some plans for the conditioner, but that was back when he didn't know things were so complicated. Anyway, Ginger isn't a fucking Rapunzel and there is no need to wash his hair for this long, so fuck the conditioner, but. But now Tim definitely wants to do this again, because he hasn't seen Ginger reacting in such a way before. At least five different expressions appeared on his face one after another. Tim thinks that usually there aren't as many in a whole month.

Tim has somewhat less clothes on, so it isn't heavy, just feels strange. No, he, of course, got into showers dressed and wearing shoes, he does that all the time, but usually he is wasted or extremely hangover and this isn't a fetish of any kind. But with Ginger everything becomes a fetish, anything at all, and now it is his fucking hair. Wet cloth that's sticking to his skin also adds strange sensations to the experience.

Tim finishes rinsing out the foam and leaves Ginger's head alone, and Ginger is quietly happy about it, Ginger thinks that nothing scary is going to happen to him now.

_Probably._

Tim turns off the water again and thinks that Ginger looks like a big plush toy floating in the river. This is even a little funny. He sighs, as if he's about to do a particularly difficult job, and starts undressing Ginger, starts from his upper half, because if he tries dealing with the lower one first he is never going to reach the top. This isn't easy, because there is a whole wardrobe on Ginger, two layers of cloth, and they stubbornly resist separation. Then Tim figures he should forget about separating the fucking layers and starts peeling it off all at once, and it looks as if he's skinning a large marine animal with flippers. Ginger doesn't even think about helping him. Ginger's playing asleep, dead and paralyzed at the same time. Ginger hopes Tim is suffering. Tim is, but he is okay with that, more than okay, actually.

Tim frees the upper half of Ginger's limp body and asks him if he's even alive there. Ginger makes a sound, confirming that he is, so Tim dives down and starts unbuckling and untying and unfastening various clasps and laces on Ginger's boots, and there're surprisingly many of those, and Tim realizes he's never noticed how his boots look before. And he should have, and also he should buy him a less ridiculous pair. Because boots with ten veclro fasteners, three buckled straps and fucking laces... Well, that's insane.

Tim silently curses Ginger's boots and swears to himself he's going to burn them while Ginger's asleep, and Ginger realizes he enjoys himself very much. He's been enjoying himself since the very second Tim left his hair be, and maybe even a bit earlier than that, it's just hair... Hair's too much. But sitting still, getting undressed and freed of boots, this he likes. Especially the getting freed of boots part, and his favorite thing about it is Tim's hands that are fumbling with the clasps and buckles, so he thinks he should buy boots with even more of them.

Their thoughts are synchronized again, it's just their intentions are opposed.

The sole protector is full of soil, so when Tim finally pulls the boot off everything around them becomes even more dirty, and this is when Tim thinks for the first time that this is really fucking unhygienic. Also he's really fucking into it, as if taking a shower accompanied by soil was his most cherished dream. Of course, it wasn't, it's all on Ginger, graves and his inability to stop.

Tim gets things done much faster when dealing with the other boot, because now he's got useful experience, and Ginger gets upset so much that he stops playing asleep, dead and paralyzed at the same time and informs Tim that he wouldn't mind taking it slow, because this he actually enjoys.

_Unlike the hair touching_, both of them think, but they think this with a different tone to the thought.

Tim doesn't respond, Tim thinks that this is out of all reason, pure nonsense, but gets even happier anyway.

Then he wonders if he should take off Ginger's socks and figures they will get off by themselves, along with everything else.

Along with the pants, that is, or rather with two pairs of pants, because there're two pairs of pants on Ginger, and one of them isn't really a pair of pants, it is some sort of protective bullshit, meant to keep the heat inside. That's why it is pretty tight on its own, and now it's also wet, which doesn't help anything. Tim starts panting angrily, fighting every centimeter of the protective bullshit, and this time Ginger gets even happier, because now he isn't the only one suffering.

Ginger gets so happy that he opens his eyes and secretly stares at Tim through the lashes. His eyes could bulge out all the way, for that matter, Tim would never in the world notice that.

"Horrible, right?" Ginger laughs, unable to stay silent.

Tim sighs and admits that yes, it is horrible and he will never again put anything like that on Ginger. And he won't make him take a shower wearing that, only wearing something normal, and also could he please just fucking cut it with a knife already.

He isn't serious, not about the knife, it's just a thought, but when said this thought suddenly appeals to them both. So Tim goes to the kitchen to get the knife, leaving dirty creeks behind him, wondering if they would be able to live here once they are done. But he always could call somebody, somebody who could clean this mess. This isn't a regular thing, this type of a mess, and he didn't plan this. It's not like he plans anything, to be honest.

Ginger starts praying when Tim comes back. Praying for him to accidentally cut him, while he's trying to dispose of the moronic protective bullshit. He's taken the other pair of pants off, while Tim was in the kitchen, because he's thrifty and also because he is sentimentally attached to this plaid fleece now. Because Tim bought it. It isn't even outerwear, it looks more like fucking pyjamas, and Ginger doesn't really know what for he needs fucking pyjamas.

Tim doesn't leave a single scratch on him, even though he is not the most careful person on the planet. Tim also thinks about cutting Ginger, he wonders what would happen if he slits Ginger's thigh. With a giant kitchen knife. Slits it deep. And these thoughts, they are dangerous. Tim's hungry, Tim wants blood, and Ginger can feel it, and also both of them still need to take a shower, and Tim hasn't even started doing anything with himself.

"_Later_," Tim tells Ginger, responding to their silent wishes, and they again look at each other as if they murdered somebody together and buried the body in the woods, and the last time they did that happened so long ago, in the previous eon.

Through all of this, things they've done, haven't done, things they've said, haven't said, things they've promised, things that only exist in their shared consciousness, through all of this Ginger, who's now finally naked, gets hard, and this is to be expected. _Are you even serious_, Tim thinks. Tim thinks that if four people can sleep here, two people can definitely fuck here, and they will take that shower eventually, won't they.

Ginger knows that Tim's thinking that and tells him to stop, because his glare is pure hunger, and Ginger already feels gnawed on, so first they should have a wash. Ginger stops playing a large marine animal and starts undressing Tim, and Tim doesn't mind much, even though this is not what he imagined, but his imagination has been at odds with reality for god knows how long, his imagination and reality had a row and filed for divorce, so whatever.

Freeing Tim off clothes is much easier, especially since Ginger's helping him, and also his shoes don't have any fasteners on them, and that's why he gets naked twenty times faster. Ginger doesn't feel like getting up to grab the shower gel or the washcloth or anything else of that kind, so he pours shampoo on Tim's boxers and rubs them into their sandbagged owner, who didn't imagine this, didn't imagine this at all, but he doesn't mind it either, it isn't bad.

Ginger tries getting back at Tim and digs fingers into his skull too, but this Tim doesn't mind too, more than that, and this way it's boring. Also Tim doesn't have a lot of hair anyway, and Ginger doesn't really have enough patience for spending eternities sorting through those that are present on his head.

Then Tim robs him of his own boxers, pours more shampoo on them and tells him to lie down and to lie still, tells him not to move for the next eon, playing asleep, playing dead, playing a large paralyzed marine animal, for all he cares, could be all of that at the same time. Playing none of that works for him too, just don't move. Ginger tells him to fuck off, but lies down and lies still. Tim finally does what he imagined, almost what he imagined, soaping Ginger's whole body, his neck and shoulders and then sliding lower than that, doing it slowly, thoroughly, as if he's trying to wash the dirt out of every pore, from under the skin. He particularly enjoys touching the scars. Ginger isn't nearly that dirty to put so much effort into washing him, he didn't chill out under the ground naked, after all, and also he was wrapped in plastic film, Tim's just absorbed in the process.

Ginger's also absorbed in it, just as much as Tim. Until that moment when Tim gets especially engrossed by polishing his cock, which feels almost like erotic massage, which feels so good...

_Wow_, Tim thinks, when Ginger suddenly jumps, wriggling out and shouting something incomprehensible like a cat who sat in a puddle of turpentine, turning on the water and trying to rinse something out, swearing like a sailor.

While he is at it, Tim understands what's happened, but instead of showing remorse he decides to do the same to himself, or something even worse.

"Fuck, you, what are you—" Ginger squeezes in before he does.

This is the most horrifying thing Ginger's ever seen in his entire life, it's worse than disemboweled cats or slaughterhouse videos. Tim stretches his urethra and trickles shampoo into the orifice. Not even foam, pure shampoo. Then he shudders, biting his lower lip, and doesn't even think of rinsing something out.

Ginger thinks that he also doesn't know certain things about Tim and that there are plenty of them, more than enough. Because it must hurt, it must fucking hurt so much, it's like rubbing salt into the wound, and pepper too, but much, much more painful. And it's painful for Tim to cut himself, he is a spoiled tenderling, and what the fuck is even happening here.

Tim puts his hands behind his back and lies down, avoiding the temptation to touch something. It hurts the same way it did a few seconds ago, the pain doesn't subside, but for now he manages to suffer through it and the burning sensation that now dominates in the mixture and he doesn't know why the fuck he did this, but he is not upset about it. He is hard because of it, still hard, and it doesn't look like his cock is going to be limp any time soon.

_Fucking hell_, Ginger thinks to himself, and Tim is very inclined to agree with him.

Then Ginger shakes off his shock and rinses the shampoo out of Tim's urethra himself, which isn't easy under the sprinkles of the shower head and it would be much faster if there was at least a tap and also something else, something that could fix the damage to the tissue.

Tim pushes him off himself and tells him he wants to take a leak.

Ginger thinks this isn't surprising, says _okay_ and catches Tim's hand when Tim attempts to leave. And asks Tim if he trusts him, and this doesn't sound like a question at all. So Tim pulls on a tragic facial expression and takes his leak right there, in the stall, and Ginger all but outright stares at him, because, apparently, he's also fucking weird, and blood that was a thing at the beginning is nothing now, blood is innocent compared to this. And god, how have they even gotten here.

"What, is staring at people peeing a fetish of yours?" Tim asks him, and Tim's still in pain, but not as much as before and he's almost used to it now.

"Don't know, no... No, I guess, it's not, but I liked it. Fuck," Ginger says and blushes, throwing back his head and making a miserable sound, and Tim thinks _wow_.

"I'm never taking a shower with you again," Ginger declares, once they finally leave the belly of the beast and make it to the bed.

Tim says that he's mistaken and from now on Ginger is going to be his personal rubber duck.

As a matter of fact, Tim hates water.


	8. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8544704
> 
> There's a bit of drama in this one.

It turns out, time was moving up. When it starts suddenly moving forward, Tim feels pretty shocked.

Ginger always thinks about the time and because of that he feels shocked constantly, but doesn't say anything even when Tim snaps a little, talking to somebody on the phone. Talking to somebody about time.

Yes, they've been sitting here for three weeks already. And there's been never a good time for Ginger to go home. And he'd better feel shocked about that as well, but he doesn't, he feels inexplicable disappointment, thinking that Tim will get back on track right now and...

He thinks about the box of scalpels. And then about his own ability to push Tim over the edge. And maybe it affects Tim more than that mysterious voice he's listening to. Then Tim puts down the phone and looks at him thoughtfully.

They both feel horrified.

Tim says god knows why that soon someone will send a search party after Ginger.

Ginger tells him that nobody is going to send a search party after him, even if he moves to Tibet and becomes a buddhist monk, and blinks, looking lost.

_What does this have to do with anything,_ Tim thinks.

This is about things neither of them wants to think about. Dumb things pertaining to reality.

Tim realizes with what is left of his absolutely sick brain that dumb things pertaining to reality are especially toxic today. They are much worse than usually, something like misshapen deep sea fish.

"We've been sitting here for three weeks, can you imagine?"

"Three weeks, two days and fourteen hours," Ginger says on autopilot and puts a hand over his own mouth.

"Good that you didn't waste time counting the seconds, you would've had to start all over again."

Tim laughs and doesn't understand why Ginger doesn't. Because this is funny.

Misshapen deep sea fish pull both of them down, to the bottom of the ocean.

Tim's been sitting at home for three weeks straight, and he feels amazing about that, he's ready to continue living just like that. Ginger's been sitting at Tim's house for three weeks straight, and the only thing he wants is to continue living just like that.

And fucking time can stop moving altogether.

They keep staring at each other. Ginger's waiting for Tim to decide something about their time situation. And about those misshapen deep sea fish too, by the way. Tim has no idea that Ginger's waiting for him to decide or that he is the one who has to make decisions here. On his own. Ginger is thinking something about Tim's sovereign right, they are in Tim's house, after all, this is Tim's territory, so he is the one who has the right to make decisions. Tim doesn't use this right of his, so in the end Ginger asks him hesitantly if he should go home. And Tim says that yeah, maybe, he should, and Ginger is ready to kill him for saying that, but Tim hasn't said anything wrong, has he? Then Tim adds that he'll find him and kill him if he doesn't come back by the evening, so if he doesn't plan on coming back this idea of going home isn't the best one.

This makes Ginger want to kill him even more. When did he become Tim's private property, after all? No, he doesn't think he's that. Tim also doesn't think that, so there is no reason for Ginger to feel that vindictive, but it is what it is. And their radio malfunctions, becase it is broadcasting misshapen deep sea fish. The flapping of their fins is the only tune that's being played.

The fucking fish should get themselves a deep sea aquarium and stop interfering.

Tim wonders how many _hours_ he can live without Ginger and makes a face. He has no doubts that this time period isn't measured in years, which would suck, but he could deal with that. It isn't measured in months either, which also would be seriously troubling. And not in weeks, which would be terrifying. Not even in days, which would be insane. It's _hours_.

Tim wonders if there are any aquariums for the deep sea fish. Ginger wanders around the house barefoot, trying to find his _travel_ bag. He hasn't seen it since he came here, and he even starts thinking he might have forgotten it at the airport, but then he sees it right next to the front door. He stands there looking at it and thinks if he even needs _things_. The things in the bag, the things at home, things in general. He's been doing alright without them for three weeks. Well, without his own things, the box with scalpels doesn't count, scalpels are expendables. Then Ginger realizes that _his_ box is lying there in his travel bag, which means there're two boxes. At least. Conclusions, deeply wrong conclusions that Tim thinks of him and his blood as his property that have formed in his mind take root, almost ready to bloom. This, Tim thinking that, it actually gets on his nerves, even though there is a part of him that must feel ecstatic at the moment. Most likely.

Tim doesn't know anything about deeply wrong conclusions with buds that are about to burst, so he doesn't have a single chance to build up a defense. He's still chilling out in his neverland surrounded by fish, trying to make those fucking fish leave him alone. It looks like a dialogue with phantasms of a broken mind and it's one-sided, because Tim has just one line to say. Tim thinks fish shouldn't speak at all, even metaphorical ones.

Lines of the fish are slick, wet and disgusting.

He says _I know_.

Of course, he knows, he didn't plan on getting so close with anybody. He has no plans to stay faithful forever and to the grave even now.

He's well aware that getting this close not just with somebody, but with Ginger is fucking crazy.

But now he doesn't remember why that is so. Ginger isn't difficult. Agreeable, unless he's counting. Then tedious, but it's pretty easy to shut him up. Or rather... It's easy for Ginger to shut Tim up. Ginger, of course, doesn't know anything about that, and this state of things should not be changed. Because if it does change, everything that Tim knows about himself will be under threat, and he simply won't be able to exist after that.

***

Time in Ginger's empty, deserted bedroom starts moving backwards the moment he enters it.

He thinks about what got into him and led him here, to getting into something together with Tim. Blood, yes, but he wasn't sure about it, wasn't sure about anything. He's never sure, to tell the truth. Not even what his name is, and there're several reasons for that.

If he could say anything coherent about his affection for Tim... Well, actually, that was disaffection. Tim pissed everybody off from day one, just by existing, but there was one person who liked it. That person wasn't Ginger, though. One bastard just like Tim was more than enough for Ginger, but it didn't matter much, because he still had a habit of watching people, so he watched Tim almost against his own will. At first there were no interesting results - look, this is Tim Skold, he's always bored and that's all you need to know about him. When Ginger saw Tim excited and saw what was the reason for that, what made him drop his supernatural contemptuous facade of indiffirence... Oh, he thought he was mistaken. The first time and the third time and the tenth time as well. Then Ginger realized that watching Tim is all he ever does, and everything else in the world is of no concern to him anymore.

Sure, the world had never been his primary concern in general. What was unusual about this situation is his interest in this particular, and not very agreeable, person.

But by then he didn't think that about Tim. He felt sorry for him, more and more so, and wanted to help, wanted something else too. So, when the data sample gathered by watching Tim became representative enough, Ginger wandered into Tim's room with a stationary knife.

God, was he afraid of him. God, was he afraid of himself, even though there was enough alcohol and not only that in his system to do things that in his case are hardly compatible with life. Tim didn't notice that, couldn't notice anything, now this is a fact that was proven experimentally, and Ginger's time wasn't wasted, he spent it well.

And later, when Tim became the most obnoxious creature on the planet - and it's not like before he was a pleasant guy - Ginger _had to_ understand everything right. Had to look for him and find him and drag him into his own room and, of course, he would've dragged Tim into his own room even if it was in a different building.

What happened next was not Ginger's design. He offered enough to be heard, and his offer was accepted, Tim became himself, both of them did, there were just those curious things they yet had to discover. Tim being unable to live without him. That feeling being mutual.

What else haven't they fucking found out?

What else...

***

Ginger doesn't come back. He knows very well how this will end and he needs it to end exactly like that, he's trying to regain control over his own life. Which is ridiculous, because it's not like he's ever had it. It's just now he's sure about who the person in the driver's seat is, and he himself has an ability to change things, so why not try and change them. He ignores the door bell, ignores the phone call, he keeps sitting on the window sill and stares into the twilight outside, and there is a scalpel in his trembling hand. The front door's open, the way they are in thrillers, like there is a corpse inside the house or something like it. He counts the steps when he starts hearing them, and marks each of them with a deep cut on his left thigh. He makes fourteen cuts before he speaks.

"Stay where you are," he says.

It sounds horrible. He practiced saying that, told it to the empty room around him so, so many times, he thought he'd learned it by heart, mastered the intonation pattern, but no, fuck, no, not at all.

It sounds pathetic. And unsure. It is a mystery to him why Tim who's standing in the doorway listens to him and stops.

The real reason for this is Tim getting rid of the misshapen deep sea fish. Tim got rid of them when he realized that Ginger wouldn't come back on his own, ever, so he knows what will happen if he comes closer. He slumps down, sits on the floor, leaning on the doorpost, and simply tries to hold his breath.

There is so much blood it's no help to him.

Tim manages to sit still for a whole eternity, before his mind goes blank. In reality, it is just five minutes. _Long_ five minutes. Civilizations rise and fall around him during those five minutes, new species form and die out, while he is losing everything that he thinks he is, turning into pure, unadulterated hunger. Yet, he masters enough strength to say something he could never say. He says he's sorry, _begs_ Ginger to forgive him for what he's about to do and stops existing altogether.

Neither of them has any memories of him crossing the distance between the door and the window.

Ginger presses his hand over his nape, pushing his mouth onto the cuts, almost forcing him to drink, as if he needs to, as if it could help them in any way, as if this'll save them - won't it? - and then loses his ability to think too, opens his mouth and tells Tim that he loves him. Tim can't really comprehend it, can't comprehend, can't hear anything but blood, its smell, its taste, its pulsing movement, its fucking color, but... But it is important to him whose blood it is, even in a state like that.

It's only then when he realizes it is so, so important to him whose blood it is.

There is nothing sane playing in that radio in his head, but at least now the radio is on. His hunger has a shape now, it grows bones and flesh, has breath, heartbeat, eyes, and Tim looks at Ginger's inexplicable face, abandoning his blood, he looks at him and laughs.

"So who is owned here, you, dumb stupid fuck?"

Look, this is Tim Skold and he doesn't know how to say _I love you._

Time moves in all directions while he's sitting on the floor, hugging Ginger's knees.

__________________________________________________________________


	9. There is nobody here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8548880
> 
> This is a sort of interlude that doesn't necessarily happens after the last chapter, it might occur at a different time.

_What on Earth has happened to his hair?_

The most pressing question, right.

No, Tim does look unusual. Tim looks weird. He's wearing long thin crochet braids, red and green, and they are reaching almost all the way down to his waist, tied together with a rubber tie. The sides of his head are still shaved, though, so Tim isn't unrecognizable, but he doesn't look like Tim Ginger's used to seeing.

Nothing looks the same, nothing is the way Ginger's used to seeing it, but his priorities are what they are and he's sincere.

He genuinely doesn't care about anything he sees. And also he doesn't remember a single thing. They are just walking down the street — and that's where he suddenly becomes aware of himself. First of Tim's presence, then of himself. He has no idea what they might have been doing earlier than that or where they are, and he is not interested in learning.

By the way, Tim holds his hand. And it is not romantic in any sense, far from it, Tim holds him by his wrist, as if he is a child and he has misbehaved. But even so, Tim holds his hand.

Tim's dragging him somewhere, silently, Tim says no words, and Ginger is reminded of the Red Queen and her advice to Alice, of her advice to never speak first. This is a rule he follows in general as well, almost always, and it is rather lucky that most other people break it.

Ginger's not afraid, and there is a reason, a vague reason to it, he is simply sure that there is nothing to be afraid of here.

Tim voices what that reason is, after new dents appear on their shoes, after quite some time.

They've walked a lot, and Tim poked into houses, looked through the windows, opened doors, and his fingers holding Ginger's wrist tightened their grip, so Ginger now has a whole system of understanding what it means, he's close to deciphering this language, the one that's based on tightness of Tim's grip around his wrist.

There isn't a single door that's locked and there is not a single soul around them, though Ginger's not sure about insects. Tim doesn't give a fuck if they are there or not. He simply voices what it is that made Ginger — for the first time in his life, it seems — feel completely calm.

"There is nobody here, only us."

Ginger doesn't say anything even then, he smiles an uncertain smile, shrugs.

He doesn't understand why Tim is so worried. There is nobody here, it's just them - and it is perfect, now it is like a rule that they must stick together. A universal law of this postapocalyptic world that improves the chances of survival.

Then Tim asks him if he's gone mute because of shock and demands an audible reaction from him, so Ginger has to talk now, so he talks.

"Well... Yeah? It's good that there's nobody here."

Then he wakes up, instantly regretting it, but being awake is not all bad. After all, Tim is sleeping next to him. Tim is sleeping next to him in an absurd, preposterous fashion, like a person who is entirely unaware he's sleeping next to somebody, and his hair is alright, it looks the way it always does, and there're sounds coming from the street through the windows, as proof that they are not alone.

But just the same, there is nobody there, nobody else, it's only them.

***

If Tim ever saw Ginger's sweetest dream he would wake up from it all sweaty, icy cold, he'd run out of the house right away to make sure the world is still the way it was before. So Tim doesn't see anything as calm and tranquil as what Ginger dreams of, but he sees some things that are worth describing, because more or less every sentient creature has a subconscious, and tangible reality finds its way into it through dreams.

He dreams of cacti. Okay, of course there aren't only cacti, but them he notices first, notices and admires. It's not that cacti are a rare sight, but it is important.

He finds himself in a world that is severely hostile towards him, that isn't comfortable at all, but quickly learns that this is as much comfort as one can get in such conditions. Not every living thing is dead, but there is a shortage of many, many living things, and what is left — is a bunch of people wandering around the Sonoran Desert, the homeland of these delightful cacti, and the sun the bunch of people wanders under is way too hot and simply vile. The bunch of people thinks he's their leader, so he doesn't really have any reason to be upset. He's not just their leader, he's thought to be almost a god. He can drink blood without asking, anybody's blood, and people see it as a sign of blessing. It is a rare occurrence, almost a myth, because Tim's got Ginger. Ginger was chosen by him, that's why he's also held sacred, but he doesn't care about it, this veneration doesn't mean a thing to him, he hides inside of an old abandonded trailer the two of them inhabit and only comes out at night.

This is Tim's perfect world, if you subtract the lack of hot showers, toothpicks and cigarettes — especially cigarettes — but he never dreams of anything calm and tranquil anyway, so when he wakes up he thinks a lot about his subconscious and the desires it seems to generate that are quite tasteless. Tim honestly tries to feel remorse about that, about what it is he wishes, at least about what it is he wants from Ginger. He fails.

Of course, it's not like he really tries.

__________________________________


	10. Runes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8558139

_Blood is life._  
_Blood is a bond._  
_There's no tighter bond than blood._  
_There is no sacrifice bigger than blood._

***

In the morning he finds Tim smoking outside. The morning starts somewhere closer to the afternoon, and they didn't even drink anything last night. Tim was busy with something, then they had some food, then stared at something, probably at the screen of the TV instead of the documentary about the marine life of the Pacific Ocean, and then they passed out on the couch, and all of this is exactly what Tim went out to think about.

Something is draining them.

"We need to fucking talk."

The trap closes instantly — and somewhat unexpectedly, Tim doesn't even have the time to curse his own habit of speaking out loud about certain things.

"Yeah, I guess. You're right, we should," Ginger responds. It turns out, he's been standing behind Tim sitting there at the porch. He responds, trying to add as much confidence as he can into both his words and his tone. He succeeds only in turning up the volume.

Tim suffers from a persistent desire to skip complicated moments, or at least go through them with tripled speed.

"Look," he says, lighting up another cigarette. "If I understand it right, then you thought that I... Well, that I wasn't respectful towards you. The day before yesterday or whenever the fuck that happened. Count the minutes and tell me the precise amount of time, if you want, I'll wait."

"No, you weren—" Ginger cuts himself short, feeling confused, and blinks several times. Because yes, he was, but no, it wasn't that, just no in general, but he kind of was, but not like really and...

"Alright. So I was. Anyway, that was more of a rhetorical question. What exactly did I do that gave you that idea?"

"No, you didn't do... Fuck, don't look at me like that... Okay. Okay... The scalpels," Ginger says and shuts his eyes, determined to never open them again, and both his hands are gripping the opposite arm tight.

"Uh... What? What's wrong with _the scalpels?_"

Ginger can't reply, he simply stands there and tries to inhale. Or exhale. When he finally manages, he starts explaining, rather incoherently, that his box of scalpels was in his own bag, and that Tim doesn't cut himself, doesn't he, then why does he even need his own ones, and then something else, mostly consisting of vague interjections and various — and mysterious — animal sounds, until Tim gets it.

"Fucking hell. Are you perpetually high or something? You fucking left them in my room yourself, back when we were on tour, I don't even know where you buy them. I only learnt there was another box when I came to yours, and I would've left, by the way, if I could, and I would've been able to, if you hadn't slashed yourself like that. And if you'd told me to leave, I would've tried to, even though I didn't want to and I still don't. Jesus, I thought it was because I said I'd kill you if you didn't return, as if I have that right and so on. And because I came to your house, followed you at all, couldn't fucking stop myself."

Tim shuts up, figuring that he's said enough or even too much, definitely too much for his own good.

But the way he understands his own words isn't the way Ginger does, not in the slightest, and what comes next leaves Tim stunned.

Because Ginger just sighs, having heard all that, and speaks again, trying to do it as loud and clear as he can.

"But... You couldn't stop yourself only because you think that I... belong to you, no? And I didn't agree to that... I mean... I mean, I agreed to some things, but... And I also offered some thing myself, you know, but it's probably... isn't that, like, wrong?"

Tim thinks that this is... It's fucking... Just _fucking_, because Ginger uttered more question marks than any other sounds, and all of those questions were aimed at him.

A little exercise. How to decide instead of Ginger what it was that he agreed to, while making absolutely sure Ginger thinks he was the one who made that decision?

"Do you remember what I said to you? When I came to yours."

"You said sorry... A couple of times. And called me a dumb fuck," Ginger smiles softly. "Nothing unusual."

He isn't just a dumb fuck. He's also a deaf one.

"I said — I don't remember exactly with what words, but — I said that I fucking belong to you. I think that I am yours, not the other around, okay? And it's not like I think that because I suddenly became a soap opera star, it is because I am yours, it's just a fact."

Fucking revelations.

Actually, Tim is ready to bite off his own limb and crawl away from this soap opera, but that's not really an option, because it is his head that's gotten trapped.

Who do you have to be to miss that?

Not even Ginger is that person, because Ginger didn't miss anything. At least, he remembers Tim's dead version and knows that it happened because of him, but he thinks that maybe not, maybe it was only because of the blood, or because Tim's used to getting what he wants using all means necessary. While he's thinking that, he realizes that even if that is true, then it must mean that Tim wants _him_, and a lot, he realizes that and smiles.

Tim realizes nothing. Tim understands fuck-all.

Ginger says, stuttering at every word, that this isn't important anymore, because he thinks that too, and then he adds he's sorry several times, and Tim is sure he's sorry exactly for thinking what he says he thinks, and that's just weird. Ginger says that this is not important, but Tim can stop this now, if he wants to, until it is too late, even though it is already late, but, maybe, not entirely...

He says that, but Tim of course fucking can't.

_You fucking were okay with letting me bury you_, Tim thinks.

Tim thinks that the reason Ginger objects to things is not because he has objections, but because he has a police order that dictates him to object, and that's it. He wonders what state that fucking order was issued by.

Then Tim snorts, waving the thought away, and pulls Ginger closer, grabbing at his hand, and makes him sit down, and kisses him, and for the first time in his life feels glad that nobody gives a fuck about him, which means nobody is taking pictures of them right now.

Even though he would be fine if those pictures ended up on all the billboards in the state. He is not a Republican party member, after all, he plays bass for a completely mental individual, thus proving that he is at least as mental himself. But that's his opinion. Ginger must have a different one, despite playing drums for the same dude. Despite having done that for much, much longer.

It's just that universal laws don't really apply to him.

*****

"This is all wrong, by the way. It's not how it's done."

Ginger asks what exactly is incorrect. Tim shrugs and says that _nothing_'s right. Maybe, apart from the fact that the soundboard of the deceased guitar was made of ash. Ginger pulls on a face that conveys understanding. Tim snorts, then sighs, and starts explaining.

"Ash. The world tree. Yggdrasil. The mighty fucking ash. Anyway, ash is the most suitable material for the runes, if your imagination sucks. You can't spoil anything with ash."

"Okay. Then what can you spoil it with?"

"Everything else. It's all wrong. The wood should be raw, I should be doing this alone, and the thing I plan to do afterwards isn't done by anybody. But I don't give a flying fuck about each point that I've made and all of them as a whole either, because I don't believe in this shit. What about you? Is runic divination real?"

Ginger thinks for a few seconds and then says, doubting his own words as he utters them, that any system, especially such an old and common one, deserves some respect.

"Yeah? Okay, let's be respectful," Tim's smirk looks quite unpleasant, and Ginger feels a bit confused.

There is just silence after that, even though the cutter distrubs it from time to time, slicing the soundboard into rectangular billets without any mercy to the wood.

_Boyscout training for the very young_, Tim thinks to himself.

Ginger's sitting on the couch and watching him, genuinely intrigued by his carpenting abilities. Watching him from above, because Tim is sitting on the floor.

Tim doesn't know where to fucking stop.

It wasn't him who broke the guitar — _wanna take a guess who it was?_ — and that happened long ago, but he took the soundboard exactly for this reason. To make the fucking runes. He could bet that nobody'd ever done anything like that, or almost nobody — the probability of that is negligible anyway. Plus, nobody around him understands anything about the runes, he isn't surrounded by mental fortune-tellers, after all. Apart from Manson, but he's only into Tarot, if Tim's not mistaken. Tim's fucking origins mean that he needs the runes, if he wants to walk around looking like another mysterious and enigmatic fucker who's learnt things about life by fumbling with things he always holds in his hands.

In reality, of course, he doesn't need the fucking runes at all, he is already awesome, without any props or ridiculous theatrics. Also he's incredibly lazy, so the piece of wood's been sitting in the dark dusty corner for who knows how long. That is, until Tim realizes that he doesn't actually mind certain types of theatrics.

Especially so since Ginger is so full of mystical bullshit it is about to run out of his ears.

Even though he keeps quiet about that. It's just Tim saw the books in his bedroom. In his _bedroom_, where nobody else treaded for billions of years, most likely. So this isn't about showing off for him like it is with the first fucker, it's serious.

And if somebody needs a... hm, _testimony_? Then here you go, he is more than ready to provide it.

He isn't really, but. He doesn't know where to stop, and it is too late anyway, so who cares.

"Twenty five."

Tim finishes cutting out the last billet and lights up a cigarette, and in addition spits out that there are actually only twenty four of them.

"Is it like, a safety measure? In case you... don't know, make a mistake?" Ginger offers, immediately realizing he's said something stupid, but he doesn't know what. He still feels upset about it and tries to make it better, but only makes it worse, of course. "Maybe, you should've cut more of them?"

Tim thinks that this is unbearable and wonders how Ginger managed to miss the point by that much, but figures it's for the best.

"I won't make any mistakes. It's already fucked up. What I meant was, there always used to be twenty four of them, but not so lone ago one smartass decided that certainty is not his thing and added one more. One that says nothing. It's empty. Something like — dude, stop thinking about this nonsense and asking help from prehistoric squiggles, get on with your fucking life."

Ginger laughs softly, thinking to himself that Tim only cares about this twenty fifth one. And he's almost right. In reality Tim doesn't need even it.

He needs something else entirely.

Then Tim starts carving the symbols into the wood and feels like a person who dissasembles a house piece by piece and rebuilts it from scratch in a different way, so that the couch from the living room appeared in the bedroom, doing that instead of just dragging the damn couch from one room to another. He feels that he will be doing this sort of crap for millenia and not because he wants to, he actualy wants to skip this part, to go straight to those times when he wouldn't have to do this anymore. On the other hand, this is entertaining. He doesn't remember the last time he was bored, which is a bit surprising, because the reason for that is Ginger.

Maybe he should think about it.

He doesn't want to.

He doesn't even want to think about the runes. But he should. He carves them automatically, glancing at the notepad they are drawn in just in case from time to time.

His mind is a vacant frequency.

"Come here," Tim says, finishing the last squiggle.

There is still just emptiness playing on his radio.

There is still just silence, when Ginger gets up and sits down awkwardly on the floor next to him. There is still nothing there, when Tim shifts, sitting now behind his back, and pulls him closer, his hand finding its way under Ginger's T-shirt and touching his skin. It's then when the tune changes, when the broadcast fills with hunger. Drowns in it. Shuffling of the foil wrapper is an appropriate soundtrack for hugging, but there is nothing inside the wrapper that is safe, there is a blade with a white plastic tail, a scalpel that can kill or save lives, depending on who's handling it.

Depending on what Tim's going to do. Kill or rescue.

Tim cuts Ginger's shoulder, close to his neck, the neckline of his T-shirt doesn't allow many options, but this is exactly what he wanted, he wanted to cut somewhere close to the throat, close to death, at the very edge between murdering and saving. He doesn't believe in magic, but the magic believes in him, and maybe the runes scattered around them on the floor are glowing red, like sun at sunset, and maybe something is watching them from the darkness in the corners, everything is possible. Tim wanted something similar to a ritual and he knew that, back when he could know and think.

There is nobody there who can applaud his performance. Ginger puts his head on Tim's shoulder, leaning on it and closing his eyes, and Tim himself temporarily cares only about the cut. Tim looks like an old, nasty vampire with eyes of a maniac and an obnoxious sense of humour — much more than usually. There is much more blood than usual, at least there is no need for teeth to make it flow, so at one point Tim regains his consciousness, and it gifts him fear. Before stopping, though, he checks, pressing on Ginger's ribs with his palm. He checks if stopping is of any use, because if it is not, he'll just continue, he'll go on until the blood runs cold or until it stops running, whichever happens first. He checks if Ginger's heart is still beating — and of course it is. It's going haywire in his chest, thumping fast. And Ginger shifts even closer to him, which doesn't feel like death pangs at all, and nothing like that could happen anyway. Only a complete loser would die because of such a scratch, no matter that it's pretty deep, and only a complete loser would accidentally kill somebody like this. Tim doesn't think that label applies to either one of them.

"Hey. Are you alive?" he asks nevertheless, and his voice sounds too loud for Ginger who is so relaxed he's barely present, and he shivers, startled, and Tim thinks that he wants him to shiver like that much, _much more often_.

"Hm? Uhm... Yeah?"

The question mark is clearly audible.

_And what is it you are asking me now_, Tim thinks. He's this far from stopping to give a fuck about any reasonable considerations.

"Yeah. Come on, I need you."

Ginger mutters something, trying to look at him, turning his head as much as their positions allow, and his facial expression is also much more spacey than usual, and Tim has no idea how's that even possible.

"Is something wrong?" he asks, and he sounds worried.

_God, yes. I'm not into drinking your blood anymore. Jesus, seriously, did something fall on you today?_

But it was not today, it happened yesterday and before that, every day since Tim'd let him go to his place, so he probably should chain him to himself and just drag him along everywhere he goes. Tim doesn't actually mind, not any longer, but this is not the most convenient thing in the world.

"Here," he puts the white plastic tail in Ginger hand, brushing against his somewhat cool fingers, and Ginger calms down immediately.

"Want me to cut myself?"

Yeah, right, now he feels completely fine, in his weird element.

"No, not yourself," Tim bites his lips, imagining his own reaction. "Me."

"But you don't like—"

"Exactly. That's why I am asking you. Come on, do it, we'll talk about it later. I really need you to do it now."

That's not actually why he's asking him.

Ginger says _no_ four more times. Tim patiently waits for him to quit saying that, and there is a perfect look of boredom displayed on his face.

"Fuck, alright. Where?"

Tim gives him his right hand, palm down, and his left hand is still checking Ginger's heartbeat — and he isn't sure he's hugging a human being, not a rabbit. Tim says _wrist._ Ginger drags the blade over his skin, and three tiny drops of blood appear on it, so Tim laughs out loud, unable to stop himself.

"God, stop coddling me. Cut deeper, like yourself. Like you make me cut you."

He regrets saying what he said right away, he doesn't need scars this visible on such a public spot on his body, but doesn't make any retractions. Fuck it, whatever, if only he finally makes that cut.

Ginger listens to only one of his wishes, deepening the cut, but not by much.

Tim doesn't look as he's doing that. He closes his eyes and thinks that this way — this way it doesn't hurt at all, and something warm spreads inside him. And he asks for more, not really understanding what he even says. After the third line Ginger says he won't ever cut him again.

_Later_, Tim thinks. _We'll talk later. Please._

Tim picks up a rune off the floor without looking which one is that and gives it to Ginger, and works his fist, holding the bleeding hand right above the billet, and his squiggles fill up gradually. While the wood absorbs his blood, he says that Ginger must do the same, and then they will do it with each and every one of them. He says that it creates a bond between the runes and their owner, that this all is about bonding — _bonding, do you get it, you dumb fuck?_ — this is about the biggest sacrifice one can make — _and not to the fucking runes, do you fucking get it, not to the runes at all_. He doesn't put most of his sensations into words, and there are so many of them, way too many, they are melting him, his lungs and some other parts of him, they make him suffocate, and he knows what is going to happen when they run out of runes to smear in blood. And Ginger knows it too — all of it — he knows what's in Tim's head better than Tim himself. The broadcast is turned up to maximum, radiowaves vibrating, and neither of them exists right now as what they were born to be, because magic works the way it wants, and nobody controls anything.

There is no beehive of rationality in Tim's head, there isn't even honey, he's consumed by his obsession, and it didn't need to chew.

When the last billet falls on the floor with a dull clunk, Tim turns Ginger around by his shoulders and kisses his mouth, snarling and biting, making countless sounds that have no name. Tim wraps his hand around his cock, squeezing it between their bodies, which isn't possible, because by that time they have one body, and there is not even a thread of space between them.

That's why they exist in two planes at the same time. They are travelling between the universes so that Tim could ask his idiotic incoherent questions, the nature of which is mysterious both to him and to Ginger, but he gets answers anyway. If the answers aren't words, they are motions and moans. Ginger isn't made of stone, if his composition is to be considered, Ginger is hot and soaking wet, and everything they're wearing is soaking because of their shared sweat, their shared blood, their shared hunger, their fucking bond.

Because of that both of them are wearing nothing, and neither of them remembers when they've managed to undress.

They are travelling between the universes so that Tim could push two of his fingers in Ginger's hole, howling like an impatient, starving hellhound. So that Tim, having formed into at least a semblance of something physical, could ask Ginger if he's going to get through it like this, because this is probably going to hurt — this is definitely going to hurt, he doesn't have any strength left to be careful.

They are travelling between the billions of universes, because this is the number of the worlds they need for Ginger to put a hand over Tim's mouth, holding himself open for him, as open, fenceless and exposed as he can be, offering Tim to hurt him, to please him, to terrify him, to kill him, to do fucking anything he wants. This is the number of the worlds they need for Tim to surrender, dissolving in thin air, for the space around them to become a point particle, for the world to shrink until there is nothing else but Ginger's hot, wet, tight hole he's sliding in and out of not with his cock, but with his whole body, with his fucking essence. This is what they need so that every sensation, every feeling, every fraction of a second left an imprint inside of him.

It's easier for Ginger, in some sense. He's made of awe and molten metal, and of an insane kind of pleasure that must have a different name. Ginger is made of pain he doesn't any longer feel, and this is not about what Tim was asking him, Ginger is always made of pain, of fucking pain and electrified barbed wire. Always, but not at that moment.

Somewhere closer to his fall he forces out a whisper, saying _fuck, can you go even faster_, slurring half of the consonants and each one of the vowels, but he is still heard, he's understood.

Of course.

One is to scream when one is being born, so Ginger cries out, almost as loud, and disappears entirely.

When he comes to his senses, he sees Tim, who's dragging the billet over his stomach, smearing it in come.

"This one," Tim says, turning it around in his fingers, showing that it is empty on both sides. "This one should be charged only like that."

Tim thinks he's been as respectful as he only could be.

Ginger thinks he should buy a book about the runes.

__________________________________________________


End file.
